Radio icon understood America’s real character
Leonard Pitts Jr. says his onetime boss, Casey Kasem, can be summed up best in the words of philosopher Huey Lewis: ‘It’s hip to be square.’
He remembered everything about that night.
He remembered the song they slow danced to — “You Are My Lady.” He remembered the play of the lights in her hair as he held her. He remembered her eyes as she looked up at him. He remembered wanting to spend the rest of his life with her
But it wasn’t to be. Before theymade it to forever, she died of cancer. So would Casey Kasem please play “You Are My Lady” in memory of that angel who was lost too soon?
I may have rolled my eyes as I edited that listener’s letter to be read on the air by Kasem, who died on Father’s Day at age 82 after suffering fromdementia.
We rolled our eyes a lot in the offices of “Casey’s Top 40,” the radio show he hosted after leaving “American Top 40”— in a contract dispute. We rolled our eyes at the schmaltz of R&Ds — Requests and Dedications — like the one recalled above.
We rolled our eyes at the arcana and minutiae of pop-chart trivia we were required to master. We rolled our eyes as we leafed through rock magazines, searching for anecdotes on the lives of debauched young stars that we could spin into the tales of pluck and success Kasem loved. (“Coming up, a rocker from Cleveland who slept on bus benches while chasing his musical dreams.”)
We rolled our eyes. Then we did it his way.
Invariably, when people find out I once worked for Kasem, they ask about the infamous outtake — you can find it online — where he’s cursing and ranting about a script that requires an impossible transition from an up-tempo record to a letter from a guy whose dog has died.
They want to know if that’s the way he really was.
In a word, no. I saw him every Thursday (production day) for over two years — late ’80s, early ’90s. The worst thing he ever gave mewas a reproachful look — Kasem was a hard-core vegan — when he saw me scarfing barbecue chicken pizza.
Otherwise, the Kasem I knew was re- markably at one with the Kasem we mourn this week.
That Kasem is probably best summed up in the words of the philosopher Huey Lewis, who said, “It’s hip to be square.”
And human beings did not come at sharper right angles than Kemal Amin Kasem, a grocer’s son from Detroit turned DJ who, in 1970, launched “American Top 40,” a radio show counting down the top singles of the week.
It was precisely the wrong time for that show. Radio was abandoning singles in favor of album-oriented play lists. And it was silly to think anation still bloody from the 1960s would want to hear Horatio Alger tales and a corny sign-off: “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars,” indeed.
People who knew about such things rolled their eyes.
But Kasem had the last laugh. By the time he signed off for the last time in 2009, hewas a radio icon — and also a television icon, thevoice of Shaggy fromthe “ScoobyDoo” cartoons.
Like Dick Clark and Fred Rogers, Kasem understood something we often forget about our national character.
For all the cynicism of our people, all the balkanization of our politics, all the studied disaffection of our celebrities, all our pose and pretense of being over it, Americans bend toward optimism. Toward hope and pluck. And toward a moving story, well-told.
I sat in the studio the next day as Kasem read the listener’s letter in that husky, avuncular, instantly familiar voice. He killed it, of course.
To this day, in fact, I think of that poor guy slow dancing with his doomed girl whenever “You Are My Lady” is played. That song was recorded by Freddie Jackson — a former gospel singer from Harlem who used to sing backup for Melba Moore— and it peaked at No. 12 on the pop charts.
But the story was told by Casey Kasem, a grocer’s son from Detroit who was square enough to be hip while other people rolled their eyes. He went all the way to No. 1.