As long as Angelo Dundee lived, and talked in his South Philadelphia-accented malapropisms, a golden time lived, too.

Muhammad Ali, Dundee’s greatest protégé, lost the power of speech to Parkinson’s Disease years ago. But Dundee kept on talking, telling tales of the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach, demonstrating punches with his hands and feet, laughing at memories of the Thrilla in Manila or the Rumble in the Jungle.

More than Ali’s “fistic voice,” as he put it, Dundee embodied the sweet science of boxing and its colorful personalities. He was a link to an electric time, not only in his sport but in America. A time of turmoil and promise. A time of seismic knockouts in the ring and seismic shifts in society.

As the men of that time passed away — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Lennon, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier — the ageless Dundee never stopped working. He was most comfortable in the gym.

Dundee died of a heart attack Wednesday in Tampa. He was 90. He was the brilliant trainer of 15 world champions, from Carmen Basilio and Luis Rodriguez to Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman.

Boxing won’t be the same without Dundee in the corner. The sport has lost a glorious storyteller and with him a part of its history.

Dundee died content after “living life to the fullest,” said his son, Jimmy Dundee. In recent weeks Dundee attended Ali’s 70th birthday party and an event at the International Boxing Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 1992. He was training a young fighter with Olympic potential.

For six decades, he mended cuts, stopped bleeding and motivated fighters. When Cassius Clay, blinded by something in his eye, wanted to quit against Liston in their 1964 heavyweight title bout at Miami Beach Convention Hall, Dundee stalled for time, frantically sponged Clay’s face and pushed him off the stool, shouting, “You can’t quit now. Keep dancing! Hit and run!” Clay won when an exhausted Liston spat out his mouthpiece and didn’t answer the seventh round bell.

Dundee loved recalling the time he exhorted heavyweight Johnny Holman to victory. He knew Holman’s dream was to buy a house, so when Holman fell behind, Dundee yelled, “This guy’s taking your house. He’s taking that television set!”

He rallied Leonard against Thomas Hearns by saying, “You’re blowing it, son.” He coached Leonard to a rematch win over Roberto Duran by constantly reminding him to slip the hands of stone. In the eighth, Duran made his “No mas” surrender.

In the snarling, often duplicitous subculture of boxing, Dundee radiated kindness. Here was this gentle soul known as Angie smiling his way through the carnage of battered noses, broken jaws and bruised egos.

“I’d get along with a dead rat,” he said, his words coming at you like a left jab. “I think I’m a happy character. I enjoy people.”

Dundee was a contradiction in a dog-eat-dog world inhabited by Mike Tyson and Don King.

One of his favorite sayings was, “It don’t cost nothing to be nice.” He signed my copy of his autobiography “To Linda, thanks for being NICE.”

His empathetic nature mirrored that of Ali, which is why they had “this special thing, a unique blend, a chemistry,” Dundee wrote in his book, My View From the Corner. They still communicate even though Ali is silent.