Casey Kasem

Casey Kasem never issued any official recordings while alive, yet he achieved legendary standing in music nonetheless. As both the originator and longtime host of American Top 40, one of radio’s most durable institutions, he presented the nation’s biggest hits over many years; at his peak his voice reached listeners on more than 1,000 stations worldwide. Born to Lebanese Druze parents, he launched his broadcasting career in the mid-1950s at Detroit’s WJBK. After moving to California in the early 1960s he refined his understated delivery of rock trivia while working at KYA and KEWB, then completed a productive six-year stretch at KRLA. In 1971 he and Don Bustany launched the syndicated program American Top 40, which began on just seven stations before rising rapidly to become America’s highest-rated radio show from the mid-1970s through 1988, when contractual disagreements led him to step away. He returned to host the program again in 1998 and remained until 2004. Kasem also earned widespread recognition for voice acting, above all for his long-running portrayal of the goofy, overeating, and easily frightened Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo cartoon franchise. He died in June 2014 at a hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington, at the age of 82.