He was receiving pain medication, but not food or water, after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Murphy determined that feeding him would have been detrimental to his health.
“Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars,” Kasem, a Detroit-born Lebanese-American, told millions of listeners at the end of his invariably cheery weekly radio program, which ran from 1970 to 2009.
On his syndicated show, Kasem counted down the 40 most popular songs of the week in order, finishing with the No. 1 song. Before each song, Kasem told an upbeat anecdote about the singer’s road to success and read letters from listeners.
At its peak, Kasem’s show was heard on more than 1,000 stations in about 50 countries. “I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That is the timeless thing,” Kasem told the New York Times in 1990.
“American Top 40” and its numerous spinoffs were radio mainstays over next four decades, and Kasem’s warm, distinctively husky tenor became one of the country’s most instantly recognizable voices.
Reuters and Los Angeles Times contributed.
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