Keep Reaching For the Stars

Listening to Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem, who died today at 82, present the forty bestselling pop singles of the week was something that and my sister and I  looked forward to every Sunday morning when I was a teen and she was a tween.  Even though I was already into FM rock radio by the early eighties, it was still fun to listen to Kasem's "American Top 40"  and keep up with what the Billboard singles charts had to offer.  Bear in mind that it was a time when new bands like the Go-Go's and Men At Work were emerging, and veteran rockers were showing sings of rebirth after punk came and went, so the future for pop looked bright.  (If I only knew then . . . :-( )  Casey Kasem was the man to play the new hits and put them all into perspective - which he did,  in New York on WNBC-AM and then on WPLJ-FM as AM radio evolved to a mostly talk-based medium.  

It wasn't just the countdown and the guess as to what song was at number one that week that made Kasem required listening.  His segment of listeners' long-distance dedications to loved ones, using songs that may or may not have been on the charts that week, were corny but sweet. His stories about the acts he played also made the show entertaining; ol' Casey had a knack for bringing anecdotes about pop performers to life.  I remember his story about how Supertramp were backed by a wealthy Dutchman before they broke through commercially or got noticed by the rock press, or his yarn about how getting stuck somewhere in a blizzard allowed the former members of Squeeze to reconcile their differences and eventually reunite (which they did following a successful charity concert).  Some of his tidbits only remotely had something to do with one of the records he was about to play, and my sister dismissed such factoids as "nit-nat information."  Unlike the Beatles, Casey Kasem had plenty of time for trivialities.  But to me, such trivia only added to the charm of his show.  If you only wanted to know what was on the Billboard singles charts on any given week, perhaps you were better off just reading the magazine.    

Kasem was also a part of my childhood without my knowledge.  He voiced several animated characters in Hanna-Barbera cartoons and Rankin/Bass holiday specials, the most famous example being the voice of Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo cartoons.  The man knew how to use his voice on radio, so that made him a natural at voice-art work.  I look back at those animated shows and I'm astonished how, in so many instances, I didn't realize, not even much later, that it was he who provided all those voices.

I stopped listening to "American Top 40" not out of boredom with Kasem but out of frustration with the records that were on the charts.  By the mid-eighties, I didn't like where popular music in America was headed (and it's still on the wrong path).  But I never forgot how fun it was to listen to Casey Kasem, and I know we're all going to miss him.  As a final thought, I'd like to offer his famous "American Top 40" sign-off: "Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars."  RIP. :-(