Join Kool 98-3 Sunday Mornings from 8am to Noon for Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40”, The 80’s! Every week, we feature a countdown of Casey’s from the 1980’s, exactly as it originally aired in that particular week and year!
Casey Kasem was one of the most recognizable voices in radio and television. Millions of fans around the world still find his name synonymous with musical countdowns. Today, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 – The 70’s and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 -The 80’s continue to be distributed and broadcast by Premiere Networks on more than 200 radio stations around the world, as well as on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio.
In 2009, after 39 years as the “King of the Countdowns,” Kasem stepped down as host of American Top 20 and American Top 10, and in 2003, he retired from the helm of American Top 40 – the show he created in 1970 that became the gold standard of music programming.
Kasem’s friendly, “crackling” voice style took him to the top of his profession. The man, who once dreamed of being a baseball player but ended up as a radio sports announcer instead, was the youngest member ever inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. He has his own star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame. In 1997, Billboard magazine honored him with its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award. Kasem was honored with the first ever “Radio Icon” award at the Radio Music Awards in 2003. He also received the first “Lifetime Achievement Award” from Clear Channel Communications, parent company of Premiere, in 2004.
Kasem also released his own series of music CDs entitled, Casey Kasem Presents America’s Top Ten Through The Years, highlighting 20 top ten hits from each decade of the rock and roll era, the 1950s – 1990s.
Throughout his career, Kasem worked as a character actor in films and television. He has voiced countless commercials and Saturday morning cartoon-show characters, including the voice of Shaggy in the evergreen Scooby Doo television and film franchise.
All this is a long way from when young Kemal Amen Kasem, son of Lebanese Druze parents, was a sportscaster for his Detroit high school’s radio club. It was a short hop to radio acting. While majoring in speech and English at Wayne State University, he landed roles in national shows like “The Lone Ranger” and “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” During military service in Korea, he coordinated and acted in radio drama on the Armed Forces Network.
Kasem passed away on June 15, 2014. He is survived by his four children and his wife Jean, an actress who co-starred in the 1987 NBC-TV comedy series “The Tortellis.”
