#Casey September 17

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September’s 30 Day #Coach4aday Challenge is to profile a biography on someone. Today it is on a man named Kemal Amin Kasam who you may not recognize by his proper name. When you substitute his nickname for his proper first name you get CASEY Kasem.

If you are older than 40 you probably have listened to a radio show called America’s Top 40 which was hosted by CASEY Kasem. That show ran from 1970-1995. In 1998 it came back and today it is hosted by Ryan Seacrest.

The first episode aired on July 4, 1970 and CASEY began that broadcast “the best selling and most-played songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico,”. That eventually morphed into the tagline jingle “Casey Coast to Coast”. “When American Top 40 launched, it was only played on seven stations.

Casey Kasem Bio

CASEY was born in Michigan in 1932. His given name was inspired by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who his dad admired. Kasem’s parents were Lebanese Druze immigrants, who worked as grocers in Michigan.

Radio came into Kasem life as a high school student at Northwestern High School in Detroit. After high school he became more involved in radio while a student at Wayne State University. After college CASEY eventually found his way to Los Angeles CA. His first gig was at radio station KRLA.

In 1970 Kasem’s career took off when he started his own radio program called ‘America Top 40’. Each week he counted down the top music tracks of the country. The show hit such peaks of success that there came a time when it was broadcast over 1000 radio channels that is quite a climb from the 7 original stations.

If you were a cartoon fan you probably know him for being the unique voice of Shaggy in the ‘Scooby-Doo”.

Kasem died on 15th July 2014, at the age of 82, at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Washington. He was buried in Oslo, Norway.