For those that have visited this blog expecting to see commentary from me about the current situation regarding Casey Kasem, I've not posted such comments yet.
I noticed that a blog I wrote a couple years ago about his retirement from radio (July 2009) has gotten several visits and so I'm assuming people have been re-directed there from other sites because of the 'Casey Kasem' headline in that blog post.
You can read that 2009 blog HERE.
I've made some commentary here and there on a couple of social media sites about Casey's ordeal but I hadn't put together a blog post about it until today. Casey's going through a debilitating disease and it's something that's speculated to have been in it's early stages for the last several years. Since the announcement of his medical condition there's been a long, sad, and baffling family feud that's taken place regarding visitation rights for Casey's children, among other things...
You can read about it HERE.
I just happened to come across that article today and since it's the most recent, as of 3pm, I decided to provide a link to it. In other articles I've seen it's long been said he's in the advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease...in that article above it mentions a different, although similar, disease. Regardless of the actual disease he has, it's seemed to have become secondary to the family feud.
Casey's been "missing" for a couple of days. His children nor a local Judge have any information on his location. Rumors are spreading like fire in a windstorm.
It's almost like a Scooby-Doo episode.
There's a mystery as to his whereabouts and at some point today there's suppose to be a missing person's report filed and according to the article it'll get the FBI involved. Like all of you, I'm curious about Casey's whereabouts and hope there's some sort of information given that'll satisfy everyone.
A brief synopsis of his entertainment career:
Casey Kasem had a long career in radio, locally, before becoming the nationally recognized host of radio's American Top-40 in 1970. A year earlier he began his career as the voice of Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Even before the arrival of Shaggy in 1969 came the role of Robin in The Adventures of Batman, an animated series from the Filmation studio in the late '60s.
These cartoon adventures will be released on DVD in their entirety on June 3, 2014.
Each Batman and Robin adventure lasted roughly 13 minutes during Season 1 (2 segments lasting around 6 and a half minutes each) and for Season 2 the adventures had been reduced to 6 and a half minutes and as you could tell that called for some super quick detective work and criminal catching!! 34 individual installments were produced altogether (17 episodes per season). These short episodes aired alongside Superman in an hour long series called The Batman/Superman Hour. It's the first animated series to feature Batman and Robin. Olan Soule voiced Batman and Casey Kasem voiced Robin. The 34 segments aired originally from September 1968 through January 1969. Casey voiced Robin on various projects until 1985. In Josie and the Pussycats, Casey voiced Alexander Cabbott, III. Casey later gave voice to several Transformers characters in the 1980's series and provided voice-overs for NBC-TV.
In addition to radio and cartoons, Casey had a long running television series that aired for more than 10 years in syndication. The series, America's Top-10, spotlighted the Top-10 of various weekly album and singles charts and inserted music videos (if available) of recent hit songs from the Top-10. It's on this TV series that the visual image of Casey has long since been immortalized and playfully mimicked by impressionists of the era. You can find a lot of clips of Casey from his TV series on You Tube. It began in 1980 and lasted until the early '90s.
Also, each year, Casey counted down the top 25 reruns of the year on Nick-at-Nite.
The Nick-at-Nite Rerun Countdown originally began on the last day of December in 1989 and it played the top 25 reruns from 25 to 1 as determined by a popularity call-in vote from viewers. The #1 rerun of the year would then kick off the brand new year at Midnight. The only catch was...the TV series obviously had to be a part of the current line-up and it had to have been an episode that had aired in the last 12 months.
As the years went by the marathon was broken into several individual specials rather than presented as a single 20+ hour event. The title changed at some point to Classic TV Countdown and it was spread out over a series of nights with the last remaining reruns airing in the hours leading up to Midnight. Casey was on hand every single year from 1989 through 1998. One of the highlights happened to be the special guest celebrities that might drop by...and given the New Year's Eve concept the guests would appear drunk or slightly intoxicated while being 'interviewed' by the stern and serious mannered Casey.
An edited clip of America's Top-10 is featured below. The person that uploaded it edited out the music performances. I decided on this one because it's one of his last installments plus it aired on April 18, 1992. That date may not be important to a lot of people but April 18th is my brother's birth date and I got a kick out of seeing the music and movies in the Top-10 for the week ending April 18, 1992. I shown him the clip several years ago.
The sound needs fixing, though...it's not too loud...so adjust your speakers...
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