CHICAGO — Many years ago, sitting in his office high atop the Wrigley Building, Mike King was telling me about the many people he had worked with in his long career as a sound engineer — a star-studded crowd that included Jonathan Winters, Burgess Meredith, Bob Newhart, Ellen Barkin, Dionne Warwick, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope and, of all people, Richard Nixon. There were dozens more, because for decades King was one of the most successful, prolific and admired sound engineers in history. John Michael King died Jan. 16 at a nursing facility in DeKalb. He was 85 years old. “I was there every day,…
