Casey Kasem: Top 40 DJ and Detroit native was No. 1 fan favorite

posted on: Jul 30, 2015

By Kim Silarski

When syndicated radio host Casey Kasem ended his broadcasts with “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars,” it wasn’t just a sentimental tagline. It was a philosophy for the Detroiter who dreamed big and made it big in radio and voice acting.

Kemal Amin Kasem was born April 27, 1932, the first child of Amin Kasem, a Detroit grocer from Lebanon’s Shouf region, and his American-born Lebanese wife, Helen. The family, which soon included a little brother, Mouner, lived at
646 W. Alexandrine; just two blocks from Amin’s grocery store on Cass Avenue. Now part of the trendy Midtown area, the neighborhood was then a modest Arab immigrant enclave.

Many Arab immigrants to America launched food-based businesses to support their families and provide jobs for relatives coming to the U.S. Kemal’s parents wanted him to assimilate; he was purposefully kept from learning his parents’ native Arabic. However, the family’s Druze faith was firm (Shouf, Lebanon, is considered the Druze homeland), and Casey remained active in the American Druze community throughout his life. As an adult, Kasem recalled how his elders’ traditions of storytelling and one-upsmanship inspires his radio and acting style.
A teenager of slight build with dark curly hair, a winning smile and an engaging tenor voice, Kasem longed for a career he wasn’t equipped for: shortstop for a Major League baseball team. At Detroit’s Northwestern High School, he found another way to get into sports. As part of the school’s radio club, he had his first experience behind a microphone as a sportscaster in 1948.

Kasem also gained a nickname at school: “Case,” a contraction of his surname. “Case” turned into “Casey” early in his professional radio career. Being a Detroiter helped his budding career — decades later, researchers determined that a Midwestern inflection was the most effective delivery for broadcast announcers.
After his 1950 graduation from Northwestern, 18-year-old Kasem briefly worked as a disc jockey at WDTR, the radio station of the Detroit Public Schools. He simultaneously launched an acting career, voicing youthful roles for “The Lone Ranger” and “Challenge of the Yukon” radio series. The shows originated in the WXYZ radio studios in Detroit. Kasem enrolled at Wayne (not yet State) University, majoring in speech education. It was at the campus radio station that Kasem earned the title role in “Scoop Ryan, Cub Reporter,” a gig that led to a 15-minute weekly program on Detroit’s WJR. He also was an announcer for WJLB.

A draft notice in 1952 interrupted Casey’s studies. The U.S. Army deployed him to Taegu, Korea, where he worked on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. When he returned to Detroit, he became a substitute news reader at radio station WJBK, using the moniker “Casey at the Mike.” He quickly assumed the announcer’s role. It also was the early days of television, and Kasem’s bosses at WJBK found in him a perfect sponsor tie-in. Casey at the Mike morphed into Krogo the Clown, host of a children’s cartoon show sponsored by Kroger supermarkets.

In 1954, Kasem completed his university degree and left home for radio stations in Cleveland and Buffalo. His father’s death brought him back to Detroit for a time. Then, in 1963, Casey moved to California, where he experimented with movie acting, recorded a minor hit single, and took on voice-acting assignments to pay the bills. In 1969, he originated the character of Norville “Shaggy” Rogers on the animated television program “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” He also voiced Batman’s sidekick, Robin, in the “Super Friends” cartoons and hundreds of other characters.

The following year, Casey would embark on his most memorable accomplishment: co-creating and hosting “American Top 40,” a pop-music radio show based on weekly sales charts from Billboard magazine. Casey added trivia-filled introductions and heartfelt song dedications to his then-fresh countdown format, carving out a permanent place in American music and pop culture history.
Kasem became successful beyond his dreams. During his 64-year career, he amassed an estate estimated at $80 million.

He embraced his celebrity, using it and his wealth to advance such causes as animal rights and the environment. He was pivotal in the establishment of the American Druze Cultural Center in Eagle Rock, California, the first organization of its kind in the U.S. He contributed $2 million to Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies to establish a post-doctoral fellowship in Druze and Arab studies.

Kasem valued his privacy, yet his personal life, especially family disputes over his end-of-life medical care, were widely chronicled in the media.
When he died in 2014 at the age of 82, fans around the globe took to social media to mourn — one particularly touching image that circulated showed a saddened Scooby-Doo sitting at Kasem’s grave.

Kim Silarski started her major-market radio career atop the Maccabees Building and is now communications manager at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.

Source: www.mlive.com