Long Distance Dedication- SPECIAL BONUS EPISODE

Join Steve for an unbelievable, personal and twisting tale of intertwining paths with the silver-toned king of the top 40 countdown, Casey Kasem. It's a story that reaches back through the years to very much validate Kasem's signature sign off: "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speed of Sound as a production of I Heart Radio
for people of a certain vintage. The following phrase is
likely to be self explanatory. Well, now we're up to
our long distance dedication. But in case you don't know,
that was the voice of legendary radio DJ Casey Caseum,
host of the long running countdown show American Top forty,

(00:20):
which was a beloved institution during its run in the
seventies and eighties, and long distance dedication, where Casey read
letters from listeners and played their requests, was the most
popular feature on the show. The letters you read were
generally quite schmaltzy and usually tugged at the heartstrings like
small soap operas, but Casey's long distance dedications had the

(00:41):
power to rekindle connections across great distances, and, as it
turns out, across time. I'm Steve Green, and on this
special edition of Speed of Sound, I'll be looking at

(01:03):
the magic that was the American Top forty long distance dedication. Now,
before I go any further, it's important for me to
establish that during my junior high and high school years,
I was a devoted listener of American Top forty. Well
more than just a devoted listener. I taped the songs

(01:23):
from the show onto cassettes and write down the chart
positions in a notebook. I guess you could call me
a chart geek. I first encountered American Top forty while
at a friend's house at the beginning of nineteen four.
I was very proud of myself for having managed to
record on to cassette the entire w ABC New York
Top one hundred of nineteen seventy three. Now this was

(01:45):
no small accomplishment because w ABC played their Top one
hundred of the year in random order throughout Christmas Week,
so you had to listen pretty much the whole week,
hearing some songs played multiple times before you were able
to catch them all. I showed my friend my list
of all the songs I'd recorded, and he told me
that he'd heard a different Top one hundred of the

(02:06):
year on some FM station and that they played the
songs in order. He then turned on his cassette player
and I heard Jim Croach's Bad Bad Leroy Brown introduces
the number two songs of the year, and then I
heard this, Well, are you ready for the tune that
ranks number one? For nine Tony Orlando and Dawn took

(02:26):
that story and made it the biggest hit of I'm
sure you remember tie a yellow ribbon round the old
old tree. I'm calling the whole I said to my friend,
I thought you said they played the top one in order. Well,
then why is number one after number two? And that

(02:50):
was my introduction to the idea of the chart countdown.
But it was not, by any means my introduction to
the voice that was hosting that countdown. I immediately recognized
that voice from a whole bundle of Saturday morning TV cartoons.
That DJ whoever he was, was the voice of Shaggy
on Scooby Doo That that's a real fun game, Scooby,

(03:13):
come on, I'll show you how it works. And the
voice of Robin on The super Friends, Holy Short Stories, Batman,
how do we ever get Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman
out of these books? And the voice of Alex on
Josie and the Pussycats. Hey, you guys don't look power,
but I think we're being fouled. And on top of that,
he was heard on a slew of other less successful cartoons.

(03:35):
On ABC's nine Saturday Morning lineup, for instance, he voiced
regular characters on no less than three different shows, Hot Wheels,
sky Hawks, and the Cattanooga Cats. On that last one,
he even had a Southern accent. My answer him, I'd
never say no, how about you, Kitty Joy. The voice

(03:55):
was unmistakable. Now, the whole idea of a countdown would
certainly make taping songs from the radio a lot easier,
and so by the very next Sunday morning, I was
a regular listener of American Top forty. Besides hearing the songs,
I loved hearing all the stories and chart factoys that
Casey shared, which really gave context to records and which

(04:17):
were the beginning of my education in the history of
rock and roll. I also loved the really cool American
Top forty theme song, which was played on a new
fangled moge synthesizer, in which on some weeks, sounded better
to me than any of the songs in the countdown.

(04:41):
When I started listening, Casey Cason had already been doing
American Top forty for over three years. I was just
too young to know about it. His first show, which
aired on the fourth of July weekend, has been replayed
on radio quite a few times through the years, and
listening to it, you hear by then veteran Top forty
DJ who done stints and numerous AM stations around the country,

(05:04):
most recently k r l A in Los Angeles, except
now he was transitioning to a scripted show. Attempts to
try to tell us something about air pollution, revolution, gun controls, sound,
the soul, shooting rockets, to the mood, kids going up
too soon. Politicians say more taxes will solve everything in
the band blade on, So Ron and Ron and Ronley
go where the world's added? So what he knows? You see?

(05:26):
It's just a ball of confusion. Casey was more than
eight years into hosting American Top forty before he aired
his first long distance dedication, but in fact he'd come
up with the idea years earlier in ninety four, at
the height of Beatlemania, when he actually put out a
forty five RPM single under his own name on Warner

(05:47):
Brothers Records entitled A Letter from Elena. It was pretty
much an attempt to jump on the Beatlemania bandwagon. Hello,
I'm a disc Jackie, And following a beatle performance, one
of my listeners wrote me a touching letter because it
really happened I'd like to share it with you, Dear Casey.

(06:17):
If you're wondering what it is that I'm writing about,
I'll tell you. I hugged my favorite Beatle, George Harrison.
After a two minute story about sneaking into the parking
lot where the Beatles were leaving their concert and somehow
hugging George Harrison, Elena's letter ended this way. One thing
that I'll always remember is the way George said, high Bird.

(06:40):
It was so romantic and he was so handsome. Well, Casey,
thanks for reading this, Elena. Well. A Letter from Elena
was never a Top forty hit. It peaked at number one,
D and one on the chart, and it was Casey's
only single release ever, but it planted the seat of
an idea someday he would incorporate letters from listeners into

(07:03):
a radio show. On a two thousand and seven broadcast,
a much older Casey casem reminisced about the introduction of
the long distance dedication feature on American Top forty. American
Top forty first aired back in nineteen seventy, but there
were no dedications on the shows back then. I knew
the l d D would be a big part of
our show once we got one, but I didn't want

(07:24):
to manufacture one. I wanted it to be real. I
told my staff, don't worry, a letter will show up
one day. We waited, waited and waited. Then in the
summer of nineteen seventy eight, eight years after the show
had begun, Matt Wilson, who still with us today, was
reading through the mail and out of the blue, there
it was, and here it is Casey Caseum's very first

(07:48):
long distance dedication. I want to read you a letter
from a teenage boy in Louisiana who wants us to
dedicate a song Do a Sweetheart. His first name is James,
and it goes, Dear Casey. I live in a small town,
and about ten months ago I fell in love with
a girl named Desiree. This was the first time I'd
ever heard the name. But a week after we met,

(08:10):
Desiree had to move to Germany with her family because
their father is in the army and that's where they
sent him. It was a really sad experience for the
both of us. Then, not long after she left, a
song called Desiree came out, where Neil diamond sings about
things similar to our relationship. And when that song came out,
I felt it was written for me, which I know

(08:32):
is not true, but I like to believe it. Casey,
to me, that song will always mean something special. If
you could play Neil Diamond's Desiree on American Top forty,
maybe my Desiree in Germany will hear it and know
it's for her. Sincerely, James. Well, James, you got it.

(08:52):
Here's your long distance dedication. At the end of the song,
Casey invited the audience to send in their own dedications. Well,
this is something we haven't done before our American Top forty.
We just played a dedication song, Desiree by Neil Diamond,

(09:12):
because a young man wrote in and asked us to
play it for his sweetheart in Germany. He had a
good reason, and we want to thank James for sharing
his feelings with us. If anybody else has a special
reason for dedicating a song to someone they love, will
choose one letter each week and player dedication. All I
asked is that you dedicate a song that has been
a hit. Let's remember this was a time when not

(09:34):
only was there no Internet or texting, but even a
long distance phone call was often prohibitively expensive, sending a
letter was still the best way to keep in touch
with those who were far away. Now. That first long
distance dedication aired on August eight, but I didn't hear
that particular show. I had just graduated from high school

(09:55):
and my days as a regular listener of American Top
forty were behind me. I was heading to spend a
gap year halfway around the world in Israel. I spent
part of that year living in a small town in
the desert. Israel was a developing country back then, and
my friends and I not only had no access to
American Top forty, but we didn't even have a telephone
or a television. There were a small handful of radio

(10:17):
stations that played pop music from somewhere in the Mediterranean
We are the Voice of Peace. They played a combination
of local hits and songs that were popular in Europe.
Mostly some American hits made it through, but a lot
of them didn't. Basically, we listened over and over to
the same cassettes we brought with us from the States

(10:38):
at the beginning of the gap year. But then in
February of nineteen seventy nine, my sister very lovingly recorded
an entire episode of American Top forty and mailed it
to me on three cassette tapes. It took nearly two
months for those tapes to get to me in the mail,
but once I received them, I must have listened to
them a dozen times. That's when I first encounter under

(11:00):
the long distance dedication. Now, I was a smart alecky
eighteen year old at the time, probably thought I was
too cool for the campy earnestness contained in the letter.
Case you read on that episode, and well, I found
the whole long distance dedication thing to be just plain silly.
With probably too much time on my hands, I sat
down in Roque c a letter. It was a long

(11:22):
distance dedication from a fictional Israeli whose English wasn't very good.
After a very sappy story about his romance with an
American girl while briefly living in the U s. My
non existent Israeli asked Casey to play the most ridiculous
song I could think of. Alan O Day's seven hit
Undercover Angel. Alan o' day, by the way, was a

(11:53):
singer songwriter who in the seventies seemed to specialize in
songs about bizarre, even maccabre romances. He was the writer
of Helen Reddy's creepy number one hit Angie Baby. For instance,
the hand line read that a boy this appear that
everyone thinks you dine, except the crazy girl with a

(12:13):
secret keeps her satis us to be insane. I mailed
the joke letter off to Casey, but I had no
way of finding out if the American Top forty staff
ever opened it among the thousands of letters they must
have received from listeners. But I would have loved to
see their reaction to that choice of song if they

(12:36):
did open it. Fantasy. Over the years, Casey read over

(12:56):
three thousand, seven hundred letters from listeners on a American
Top forty. Most were dedicated to lost loves, far away friends,
but a few bordered on the ridiculous, like this one
from a girl named Melanie. This dedication beats them all.
It's from a girl in westwoodstock from mind, and she writes,
Dear Casey, I am fourteen years old, and like most

(13:19):
kids my age, I have tin grins. That is, braces
on my teeth. To my friends and family, shock, I
love my braces. I love the look and feel of braces.
I can actually get psyched up from my Orthodonius appointments.
Would you please play come together? And could I dedicate
it to my orthodon Us and most importantly to my
teeth themselves. Sign a happy railroad track, Melanie. Okay, Melanie,

(13:45):
here's your long distance Dedication. Still in its day, long
Distance Dedication became an institution so beloved that it actually
made its way to the highest reaches of the U. S. Government.
Although the dedication and We're about to hear never aired
on the radio at the time, Casey shared it with
his listeners many years later, towards the end of his career.

(14:07):
Back in my wife and I were invited to the
White House for a surprise birthday party. It was the
forty seventh birthday of a very special lady, and the
East room of the White House was decorated like a
fifty suck up. The dedication was from her husband, and
here's what he wrote, Dear Casey. Back in the seventies,

(14:28):
when I was a student at Yale, I met the
most wonderful woman in the world. We fell in love,
and after a magical courtship, we got married. Soon she
became not just my first lady, but the first lady
of Arkansas, and then of all the United States. Today,
nineteen years after that beautiful day we joined our lives together.

(14:49):
She's still my first lady, and our lives remain what
you might call a dance of love. So would you
please play Love Me Tender for Hillary? It's one of
her favorites. I want to tell her how very much
he means to me, and to wish her a very
happy birthday. Sincerely, Bill. And then I said, Mr President,

(15:12):
here's your long distance dedication, Love me now, without a doubt,
the most infamous long distance dedication of them all was
the one from September fourteenth. This is the dedication which
gave life to a very famous outtake which has made

(15:34):
its way around the Internet over the past couple of decades.
The Three Sister Hopeful Trio formed in nineteen sixty nine
in Oakland, California. They have their fourteenth Top forty hit
at number thirteen, moving up a couple of notches. That's
Dearemy by the Pointer sisters, Ruth, June and Anita. This
is Casey Cason on American Top forty in Hollywood. Well,

(15:56):
now we're up to our long distance dedication and this
one is about kids and pets and the situation that
we can all understand. Whether we have kids or pets,
are either. It's from a man in Cincinnati, Ohio, and
here's what he writes, Dear Casey, this may seem to
be a strange dedication request, but I'm quite sincere and
it will mean a lot if you play it. Recently,

(16:17):
there was a death in our family. He was a
little dog named Snuggles. But he was most certainly a
part of let's gonna start again from coming out of
the record. Play the record, okay, Please see when you
come out of those up tempo goddamn numbers, Man, is
impossible to make those transitions, and then you got to

(16:38):
go into somebody dying. You know, they do this to
me all the time. I don't know what the hell
they do it for, but god damn it, if we
can't come out of a slow record, I don't understand
it is down on the phone. Okay. I want a
god damn concerted effort to come out of a record
that isn't a fucking up tempo record. Every time I
do a goddamn death dedication, now make it. And I
also want to know what happened to the pictures I

(16:58):
was supposed to see this week since a dot last
god damn time. I want somebody to use his fucking
brain to not come out of a god damn record
that is uh that that's up, Camper, and I gotta
talk about a dog dying. Some people hear that outtake
and think it exposes nice guy Casey Cayson as a
profanity spewing tyrant. But you could also hear it as

(17:19):
the frustration of a perfectionist, a professional at the top
of his field who demanded that every element of his
show be done as well as possible and would not
tolerate carelessness. In any event, Casey regained his composure and
read the dedication to its completion. There was a hit
song back in the seventies called Shannon. As I recall,
it was about a dog who swam into the ocean

(17:41):
and never came back. The song had lyrics about finding
an island with a tree like the one in our backyard.
It's a nice description of dog heaven. Casey, could you
please play Shannon and dedicate it to my daughters, Kathleen
and Ryan. I want them to know that Snuggles is
resting peacefully in his favorite place and still very much
with the rest of the family. Okay, well, get your

(18:07):
wrong distance to give. Casey Cayson continued hosting American Top
forty up until two thousand and nine, although by that
point the show changed names a few times and was
ultimately reduced to a Top twenty countdown. But through it
all he continued to read long distance dedications every week
until he finally retired from the show at age seventy seven.

(18:28):
William Faulkner famously wrote, the past is never dead. It's
not even past. You can still hear reruns of Casey
Cayson's American Top forty broadcast in a few places, including
the I Heart Radio app and Sirius XM seventies channel.
The show has a dedicated following, and there's a robust
Twitter group that tweets commentary around each countdown. I find

(18:51):
myself a regular listener of American Top forty once again,
and if the show is from September night or later,
there are always long distance stead occasions. I'm less snarky
and a lot more sentimental than I was as an
eighteen year old, and I confess that I find some
of those dedications moving, sometimes leaving me with a lump
in my throat. And at least once it was pure magic.

(19:14):
This year, on the first weekend of July, I was
listening to the American Top forty countdown from that week
in nine seventy nine, when Casey grabbed my attention with
this teaser coming up on a T forty, A long
distance dedication from a young Israeli living on a kibbutz
in the Negev Desert to a girl named Amy whom
he met here in the United States cases coast to coast.

(19:37):
Wait a second, could that possibly be the memory of
having written that fictional letter forty three years earlier came
back to me in a flash. Oh my god, I
swear my heart started to race. I quickly pulled out
my iPad and opened the Voice Memos app. Just stinkcase
after one more song, this is what I heard, case

(20:00):
you say, you know, popular music touches our lives in
more ways than we're usually aware of. That's why we
have a feature on a T forty called the Long
Distance Dedication, And each letter that we read tells its
own story, like this one. And then Casey read the
fictional Uvall's letter broken English and all, Dear Casey, I'm

(20:20):
in Israeli living on Kibbutz Katura in the Negev Desert,
and I'm eighteen years old. Two years ago I lived
in the United States when my father was working as
a representative there. When I was living in USA, I
always listened to American Top forty. I thought it is
a nice thing. During the summer nineteen seventy seven, I

(20:40):
was meeting a girl named Amy and we became in love.
When my family moved back to Israel, it was for
me very hard leaving her because I love her so much.
We don't have the American Top forty in Israel, but
I'm hearing about your long distance dedication through the mail,
and I know that Amy listens to your show every week.
I want for you to play Undercover Angel by Alan o'

(21:03):
day and dedicated to Amy because it was our most
favorite song that we would sing together all the time
when I was with her. Teller. I am missing her
very much. Best wishes of shalom for my country. Truly,
you've vollowed, Okay, you've all. Here's your long distance dedication
to Amy somewhere here in America. This was so exciting

(21:29):
to me. I played a teenage prank on Casey Cayson,
and the payoff came forty three years later. Honestly, even
though the letter was sent to Casey Cayson, it somehow
felt like I'd received a letter from my own younger self. Now,
how Casey ever got through all that broken English with
a straight face is beyond me. I wonder if there

(21:49):
are out takes somewhere where he's berating his staff for
making him read that letter. And let's not forget the
song was Undercover Angel of all things. If you don't
understand how we'diculous that is, go and listen to the song.
By the way, Casey did make one pronunciation error, pronouncing
as kia. But in any event, I never lived on

(22:11):
that Kibutz anyway, although I had visited a few times.
I actually wrote the letter from a remote desert town
I was living in called Demona. But I figured that
a kiz was something is Raeli that Americans had heard of,
and you've all living on one might make him seem
more exotic. I can tell you that the A c
forty Twitter crowd had a field day with that long
distance dedication. One person wrote that she hoped Amy broke

(22:35):
up with You've all because only a loser would pick
Undercover Angel as their song. Another tweeter wrote that you've
all reminded him of the wild and crazy guys played
by Dan Ackroyd and Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live.
As for me, I was so excited I immediately needed
to tell someone. I called my wife, who was out
for a walk, and I started shouting into the phone.

(22:57):
The greatest thing ever just happened through thousand, seven hundred
long distance dedications, some romantic, some modelin, and one of
me punking Casey case In nine nine. While there was
no Uvall and no Amy for Casey to reconnect across
the ocean, hearing that letter absolutely connected me with my

(23:18):
eighteen year old self. Thanks, Casey, I hope you've enjoyed
listening to this special episode of Speed of Sounds and
that it made you smile. This episode was executive produced

(23:38):
by Lauren Bright Checko and Me. Sound design and editing
was done by Michael Mangini. Special thanks to I Heart's
Taylor to Coin and extra special thanks to Seaun Ross
and especially to Ron Gerber, who generously shared with me
episodes from his amazing collection of original American Top forty broadcasts.
You can reach me on Twitter at Stevie g Pro.

(24:00):
Until we meet again, keep looking for music that moves you.
Speed of Sound is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, check out the
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