Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem was an American disc jockey, actor and radio presenter, who created and hosted several radio countdown programs, notably American Top 40.
67 Facts About Casey Kasem
2.
Along the way, spin-offs of the original countdown were conceived for country music and adult contemporary audiences, and Casey Kasem hosted two countdowns for the latter format beginning in 1992 and continuing until 2009.
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Casey Kasem founded the American Video Awards in 1983 and continued to co-produce and host it until its final show in 1987.
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Casey Kasem provided many commercial voiceovers, performed many voices for children's television, was "the voice of NBC" and helped with the annual Jerry Lewis telethon.
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Casey Kasem was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 27,1932, to Lebanese Druze immigrants, Helen and Amin Casey Kasem, who were grocers.
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Casey Kasem was named after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a man Kasem said his father respected.
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Casey Kasem's parents did not allow their children to speak Arabic and insisted they assimilate into American life.
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Casey Kasem received his first experience in radio covering sports at Northwestern High School in Detroit.
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Casey Kasem then attended Wayne State University, where he voiced children on radio programs such as The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon.
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In 1952, Casey Kasem was drafted into the US Army and sent to Korea.
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Casey Kasem unsuccessfully attempted work as a stage actor in New York City for six months, auditioning for a role in the off-Broadway production Ivan Of, but lost out to Ed Asner.
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Cleveland's emerging status as a popular music epicenter appealed to Casey Kasem, having been aware of WERE's Bill Randle dating back to when Randle worked in Detroit.
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Casey Kasem's tenure in Cleveland was a brief but successful one, entering the market "with a vengeance" against Top 40 stations WHK and KYW.
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The payola scandal which enveloped Alan Freed's career emerged after Casey Kasem joined WJW; in response, Casey Kasem began a regular comedy bit called the "Payola Tune of the Night" which WJW management encouraged under the assumption it would dissuade listeners from thinking he was under investigation as well.
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Ultimately, Casey Kasem's career was not negatively impacted by the payola scandal.
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At KEWB in Oakland, California, Casey Kasem was both the music director and an on-air personality.
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Casey Kasem said he was inspired by a Who's Who in Pop Music, 1962 magazine he found in the trash.
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Casey Kasem created a show that mixed biographical tidbits about the artists he played, and attracted the attention of Bill Gavin, who tried to recruit him as a partner.
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Casey Kasem acted in a number of low-budget movies and radio dramas.
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In 1964 during the Beatlemania craze, Casey Kasem had a minor hit single called "Letter from Elaina", a spoken-word recording that told the story of a girl who met George Harrison after a San Francisco Beatles concert.
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Casey Kasem voiced the drummer Groove from The Cattanooga Cats that year.
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From 1973 to 1985, Casey Kasem voiced Robin for several Super Friends franchise shows.
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Casey Kasem voiced Alexander Cabot III on Josie and the Pussycats and Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, and supplied a number of voices for Sesame Street.
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In 1977, Casey Kasem was hired as the narrator for the ABC sitcom Soap, but quit after the pilot episode because of the show's controversial content.
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In 1984, Casey Kasem made a cameo in Ghostbusters, reprising his role as the host of American Top 40.
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In 1983 Casey Kasem helped found the American Video Awards, an annual music video awards show taped for distribution for television, which he hosted and co-produced.
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Casey Kasem's goal was to make it the "Oscars" of music videos.
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In 1988, Casey Kasem left American Top 40 because of a contract dispute with ABC Radio Network.
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Casey Kasem hosted two shorter versions of the show, Casey's Hot 20 and Casey's Countdown.
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Casey Kasem voiced Mark in Battle of the Planets and several Transformers characters: Bluestreak, Cliffjumper, Teletraan I and Dr Arkeville.
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Casey Kasem left Transformers during the third season because he believed the show contained offensive caricatures of Arabs and Arab countries.
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From 1989 to 1998, Casey Kasem hosted Nick at Nite's New Year's Eve countdown of the top reruns of the year.
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Casey Kasem made cameo appearances on Saved by the Bell and ALF in the early 1990s.
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In 1997, after having voiced Shaggy on an episode of Johnny Bravo, Casey Kasem quit his role in a dispute over a Burger King commercial, with Billy West and Scott Innes taking over the character in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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The original American Top 40, hosted by Shadoe Stevens after Casey Kasem's departure, was cancelled in 1995.
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Casey Kasem regained the rights to the name in 1997, and the show was back on the air in 1998, on the AMFM Network.
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Casey Kasem agreed to a new contract to continue hosting his weekly adult contemporary countdown shows in the interim, which at the time were both titled American Top 20.
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In 2005 Casey Kasem renewed his deal with Premiere Radio Networks to continue hosting his shows, one of which had been reduced to ten songs and was retitled American Top 10 to reflect the change.
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In 2008, Casey Kasem did the voice-over for WGN America's Out of Sight Retro Night.
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In June 2009, Premiere announced it would no longer produce Casey Kasem's two remaining countdowns, ending their eleven-year relationship.
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Casey Kasem performed TV commercial voice-overs throughout his career, appearing in more than 100 commercials.
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In 2002, Casey Kasem returned to the role of Shaggy, agreeing to continue on the condition that his character returned to vegetarianism.
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Casey Kasem did voice Shaggy again for "The Official BBC Children in Need Medley", but went uncredited by his request.
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Casey Kasem was a dedicated vegan, supported animal rights and environmental causes, and was a critic of factory farming.
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Casey Kasem initially quit voicing Shaggy in the mid to late 1990s when asked to voice Shaggy in a Burger King commercial, but returned in 2002 after negotiating to have Shaggy become a vegetarian .
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Casey Kasem was active in politics, supporting Lebanese-American and Arab-American causes, an interest triggered by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
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Casey Kasem wrote a brochure published by the Arab American Institute entitled "Arab-Americans: Making a Difference".
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Casey Kasem called for a fairer depiction of heroes and villains on behalf of all cultures in Disney's 1994 sequel to Aladdin called The Return of Jafar.
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Casey Kasem campaigned against the Gulf War, advocating non-military means of pressuring Saddam Hussein into withdrawing from Kuwait, was an advocate of Palestinian independence, and arranged conflict-resolution workshops for Arab Americans and Jewish Americans.
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Casey Kasem supported a number of other progressive causes, including affordable housing and the rights of the homeless.
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Casey Kasem was married to Linda Myers from 1972 to 1979.
52.
Casey Kasem was married to actress Jean Thompson from 1980 until his death in 2014.
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In 1989, Kasem purchased a home built in 1954 and located at 138 North Mapleton Drive in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, previously owned by developer Abraham M Lurie, as a birthday present for his wife, Jean.
54.
In October 2013, Kerri Casey Kasem announced her father had Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in 2007.
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Casey Kasem's condition left him unable to speak during his final months.
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The older Casey Kasem children sought conservatorship over their father's care.
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On June 6,2014, Casey Kasem was reported to be in critical but stable condition in hospital in Washington state, receiving antibiotics for bedsores and treatment for high blood pressure.
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Judge Daniel S Murphy ruled that Kasem had to be hydrated, fed, and medicated, as a court-appointed lawyer reported on his health status.
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Jean Casey Kasem claimed he had been given no food, water, or medication the previous weekend.
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On June 15,2014, Casey Kasem died at St Anthony's Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington at the age of 82.
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Reportedly, Casey Kasem wanted to be buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.
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However, when Kerri Casey Kasem went to give a copy of the order to the funeral home, she was informed that the body had been moved at the direction of Jean Casey Kasem.
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Casey Kasem's wife had the body moved to a funeral home in Montreal on July 14,2014.
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Jean Casey Kasem had him interred at Oslo Western Civil Cemetery on December 16,2014, more than six months after his death.
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In 1981, Casey Kasem was granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Casey Kasem was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame radio division in 1985, and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1992.
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In 2003, Casey Kasem was given the Radio Icon award at the Radio Music Awards.