0:00

Speed of Sound as a production of

0:02

I Heart Radio for people

0:04

of a certain vintage. The following phrase

0:07

is likely to be self explanatory.

0:09

Well, now we're up to our long distance

0:11

dedication. But in case you don't know, that

0:13

was the voice of legendary radio DJ

0:16

Casey Caseum, host of the long running

0:18

countdown show American Top forty, which

0:20

was a beloved institution during its run

0:22

in the seventies and eighties, and long

0:25

distance dedication, where Casey read

0:27

letters from listeners and played their requests,

0:29

was the most popular feature on the show.

0:32

The letters you read were generally quite schmaltzy

0:35

and usually tugged at the heartstrings

0:37

like small soap operas, but Casey's

0:39

long distance dedications had the

0:41

power to rekindle connections across

0:44

great distances, and, as

0:46

it turns out, across time.

0:59

I'm Steve Green, and on this special

1:01

edition of Speed of Sound, I'll be looking

1:03

at the magic that was the American Top

1:05

forty long distance dedication. Now,

1:11

before I go any further, it's important for me to

1:13

establish that during my junior high

1:15

and high school years, I was a devoted

1:17

listener of American Top forty. Well

1:20

more than just a devoted listener. I taped

1:23

the songs from the show onto cassettes and

1:25

write down the chart positions in a notebook.

1:28

I guess you could call me a chart geek. I

1:30

first encountered American Top forty while

1:32

at a friend's house at the beginning of nineteen four.

1:35

I was very proud of myself for having managed

1:37

to record on to cassette the entire

1:40

w ABC New York Top

1:42

one hundred of nineteen seventy three. Now

1:45

this was no small accomplishment because

1:47

w ABC played their Top one hundred

1:49

of the year in random order

1:52

throughout Christmas Week, so you had to listen

1:54

pretty much the whole week, hearing some

1:56

songs played multiple times before

1:58

you were able to catch them all. I showed my friend

2:00

my list of all the songs I'd recorded, and

2:03

he told me that he'd heard a different

2:05

Top one hundred of the year on some FM

2:07

station and that they played the songs in

2:09

order. He then turned on his cassette player

2:12

and I heard Jim Croach's Bad Bad Leroy

2:14

Brown introduces the number two songs

2:16

of the year, and then I heard

2:19

this, Well, are you ready for the tune

2:21

that ranks number one? For nine Tony

2:25

Orlando and Dawn took that story

2:27

and made it the biggest hit of I'm

2:32

sure you remember tie a yellow ribbon round

2:34

the old old tree. I'm

2:37

calling the whole I

2:41

said to my friend, I thought you said

2:43

they played the top one in order.

2:45

Well, then why is number one after

2:48

number two? And that

2:50

was my introduction to the idea of the

2:53

chart countdown. But

2:55

it was not, by any means my introduction

2:57

to the voice that was hosting that countdown.

3:00

I immediately recognized that voice

3:02

from a whole bundle of Saturday morning

3:04

TV cartoons. That DJ

3:06

whoever he was, was the voice of Shaggy

3:09

on Scooby Doo That that's

3:11

a real fun game, Scooby, come on,

3:13

I'll show you how it works. And the voice of

3:16

Robin on The super Friends, Holy

3:18

Short Stories, Batman, how do we ever get

3:20

Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman out

3:22

of these books? And the voice of Alex

3:24

on Josie and the Pussycats. Hey,

3:26

you guys don't look power, but I

3:28

think we're being fouled. And on

3:30

top of that, he was heard on a slew of

3:33

other less successful cartoons.

3:35

On ABC's nine Saturday

3:37

Morning lineup, for instance, he voiced

3:40

regular characters on no less than

3:42

three different shows, Hot

3:44

Wheels, sky Hawks, and the Cattanooga

3:46

Cats. On that last one, he even

3:48

had a Southern accent. My answer him,

3:51

I'd never say no, how about you, Kitty

3:53

Joy. The voice was unmistakable.

3:57

Now, the whole idea of a countdown would

3:59

certainly make taping songs from the radio

4:01

a lot easier, and so by

4:03

the very next Sunday morning, I was

4:06

a regular listener of American Top forty.

4:09

Besides hearing the songs, I loved hearing all

4:11

the stories and chart factoys that Casey

4:13

shared, which really gave context

4:15

to records and which were the beginning of my

4:18

education in the history of rock and roll. I

4:20

also loved the really cool American Top

4:22

forty theme song, which was played on

4:24

a new fangled moge synthesizer,

4:26

in which on some weeks, sounded

4:28

better to me than any of the songs in the countdown.

4:41

When I started listening, Casey Cason had

4:43

already been doing American Top forty for over

4:46

three years. I was just too young to

4:48

know about it. His first show, which aired

4:50

on the fourth of July weekend, has

4:53

been replayed on radio quite a few times

4:55

through the years, and listening to it, you

4:57

hear by then veteran Top

4:59

forty DJ who done stints

5:01

and numerous AM stations around the country,

5:04

most recently k r l A in Los Angeles,

5:06

except now he was transitioning

5:09

to a scripted show. Attempts

5:11

to try to tell us something about air pollution, revolution,

5:13

gun controls, sound, the soul, shooting

5:15

rockets, to the mood, kids going up too soon. Politicians

5:18

say more taxes will solve everything in the

5:20

band blade on, So Ron and Ron and Ronley

5:23

go where the world's added? So what he

5:25

knows? You see? It's just a ball of confusion.

5:29

Casey was more than eight years into hosting

5:31

American Top forty before he aired

5:33

his first long distance dedication, but

5:35

in fact he'd come up with the idea

5:38

years earlier in ninety

5:40

four, at the height of Beatlemania,

5:42

when he actually put out a forty five RPM

5:45

single under his own name on

5:47

Warner Brothers Records entitled

5:49

A Letter from Elena. It was pretty

5:52

much an attempt to jump on the Beatlemania bandwagon.

5:54

Hello, I'm a disc Jackie, And

5:57

following a beatle performance, one of

5:59

my listeners wrote me a touching letter because

6:02

it really happened I'd like

6:04

to share it with you, Dear

6:16

Casey. If you're wondering what it is

6:18

that I'm writing about, I'll tell you. I

6:20

hugged my favorite Beatle, George

6:22

Harrison. After a two minute

6:24

story about sneaking into the parking lot

6:26

where the Beatles were leaving their concert and

6:28

somehow hugging George Harrison, Elena's

6:31

letter ended this way. One

6:34

thing that I'll always remember is the

6:37

way George said, high

6:39

Bird. It was so romantic

6:42

and he was so handsome. Well,

6:44

Casey, thanks for reading this, Elena.

6:48

Well. A Letter from Elena was never

6:50

a Top forty hit. It peaked at number

6:53

one, D and one on the chart, and it

6:55

was Casey's only single release ever,

6:57

but it planted the seat of an idea someday

7:01

he would incorporate letters from listeners

7:03

into a radio show. On a two

7:05

thousand and seven broadcast, a much

7:08

older Casey casem reminisced about the

7:10

introduction of the long distance dedication

7:12

feature on American Top forty. American

7:14

Top forty first aired back in nineteen

7:16

seventy, but there were no dedications on the

7:19

shows back then. I knew the l d D

7:21

would be a big part of our show once we got one,

7:23

but I didn't want to manufacture one. I wanted

7:25

it to be real. I told my staff, don't

7:28

worry, a letter will show up one day.

7:30

We waited, waited and waited.

7:33

Then in the summer of nineteen seventy

7:35

eight, eight years after the show had begun,

7:38

Matt Wilson, who still with us today, was

7:40

reading through the mail and out of the blue,

7:43

there it was, and here it

7:45

is Casey Caseum's very first

7:48

long distance dedication. I want to read

7:50

you a letter from a teenage boy in Louisiana

7:52

who wants us to dedicate a song Do a

7:54

Sweetheart. His first name is James,

7:57

and it goes, Dear Casey. I

8:00

live in a small town, and about ten

8:02

months ago I fell in love with a girl

8:04

named Desiree. This was the

8:06

first time I'd ever heard the name. But

8:08

a week after we met, Desiree had

8:11

to move to Germany with her family because

8:13

their father is in the army and that's where they

8:15

sent him. It was a really sad

8:17

experience for the both of us. Then,

8:20

not long after she left, a song

8:22

called Desiree came out, where

8:24

Neil diamond sings about things similar

8:26

to our relationship. And when that song

8:29

came out, I felt it was written for

8:31

me, which I know is not true,

8:33

but I like to believe it. Casey,

8:35

to me, that song will always mean something

8:38

special. If you could play Neil

8:40

Diamond's Desiree on American Top forty,

8:43

maybe my Desiree in Germany will

8:45

hear it and know it's for her. Sincerely,

8:49

James. Well, James, you

8:51

got it. Here's your long distance

8:53

dedication. At

9:00

the end of the song, Casey invited the audience

9:02

to send in their own dedications. Well,

9:05

this is something we haven't done before our American

9:07

Top forty. We just played a dedication

9:10

song, Desiree by Neil Diamond,

9:12

because a young man wrote in and asked us

9:14

to play it for his sweetheart in Germany. He

9:17

had a good reason, and we want to thank James

9:19

for sharing his feelings with us. If anybody

9:21

else has a special reason for dedicating a song

9:23

to someone they love, will choose one letter

9:26

each week and player dedication. All

9:28

I asked is that you dedicate a song

9:30

that has been a hit. Let's remember this

9:33

was a time when not only was there no Internet

9:35

or texting, but even a long distance

9:37

phone call was often prohibitively expensive,

9:40

sending a letter was still the best way to keep in touch

9:43

with those who were far away. Now.

9:46

That first long distance dedication aired

9:48

on August eight,

9:50

but I didn't hear that particular show.

9:53

I had just graduated from high school and

9:55

my days as a regular listener of American

9:57

Top forty were behind me. I was

9:59

heading to spend a gap year halfway around

10:01

the world in Israel. I spent part

10:04

of that year living in a small town in the desert.

10:06

Israel was a developing country back then, and

10:08

my friends and I not only had no access to

10:11

American Top forty, but we didn't even

10:13

have a telephone or a television. There

10:15

were a small handful of radio stations

10:17

that played pop music from somewhere

10:19

in the Mediterranean We are the

10:22

Voice of Peace. They

10:25

played a combination of local hits and songs

10:28

that were popular in Europe. Mostly some

10:31

American hits made it through, but a lot of them

10:33

didn't. Basically, we listened

10:35

over and over to the same cassettes we brought

10:37

with us from the States at the beginning of the gap

10:40

year. But then in February

10:42

of nineteen seventy nine, my sister very

10:44

lovingly recorded an entire episode

10:47

of American Top forty and mailed

10:49

it to me on three cassette tapes. It

10:51

took nearly two months for those tapes

10:53

to get to me in the mail, but once I received

10:55

them, I must have listened to them a dozen times.

10:58

That's when I first encounter under the long

11:00

distance dedication. Now, I

11:03

was a smart alecky eighteen year old at

11:05

the time, probably thought I was too cool

11:07

for the campy earnestness contained

11:09

in the letter. Case you read on that episode,

11:11

and well, I found the whole long distance

11:13

dedication thing to be just plain silly.

11:16

With probably too much time on my hands,

11:19

I sat down in Roque c a letter. It

11:21

was a long distance dedication from a fictional

11:24

Israeli whose English wasn't very

11:26

good. After a very sappy

11:28

story about his romance with an American

11:30

girl while briefly living in the U s. My

11:33

non existent Israeli asked Casey

11:35

to play the most ridiculous song I

11:37

could think of. Alan O Day's

11:39

seven hit Undercover Angel.

11:52

Alan o' day, by the way, was a singer songwriter

11:54

who in the seventies seemed to specialize

11:57

in songs about bizarre, even

11:59

maccabre romances. He was

12:01

the writer of Helen Reddy's creepy number

12:03

one hit Angie Baby. For instance,

12:05

the hand line read that a boy this

12:08

appear that everyone thinks

12:10

you dine, except the crazy

12:12

girl with a secret keeps

12:15

her satis us

12:19

to be insane.

12:22

I mailed the joke letter off to Casey, but

12:25

I had no way of finding out if the American

12:27

Top forty staff ever opened it among

12:29

the thousands of letters they must have received

12:31

from listeners. But I would have loved to see

12:33

their reaction to that choice of song if

12:35

they did open it.

12:50

Fantasy. Over

12:55

the years, Casey read over three thousand,

12:57

seven hundred letters from listeners on a

13:00

American Top forty. Most were dedicated

13:02

to lost loves, far away friends,

13:05

but a few bordered on the ridiculous,

13:07

like this one from a girl

13:10

named Melanie. This dedication beats

13:12

them all. It's from a girl in westwoodstock

13:14

from mind, and she writes, Dear Casey,

13:17

I am fourteen years old, and like most kids

13:19

my age, I have tin grins. That

13:22

is, braces on my teeth. To my friends

13:24

and family, shock, I love my braces.

13:27

I love the look and feel of braces. I

13:29

can actually get psyched up from my Orthodonius

13:31

appointments. Would you please play come

13:33

together? And could I dedicate it to my

13:36

orthodon Us and most importantly to

13:38

my teeth themselves. Sign

13:40

a happy railroad track, Melanie.

13:43

Okay, Melanie, here's your long distance

13:46

Dedication. Still

13:50

in its day, long Distance Dedication

13:52

became an institution so beloved

13:54

that it actually made its way to the highest

13:57

reaches of the U. S. Government. Although

13:59

the dedication and We're about to hear never aired

14:01

on the radio at the time, Casey

14:03

shared it with his listeners many years later,

14:06

towards the end of his career. Back in my

14:09

wife and I were invited to the White House

14:12

for a surprise birthday party.

14:14

It was the forty seventh birthday of a

14:16

very special lady, and the East

14:18

room of the White House was decorated like a fifty

14:21

suck up. The dedication was

14:23

from her husband, and here's what he wrote,

14:26

Dear Casey. Back in the seventies,

14:28

when I was a student at Yale, I met

14:30

the most wonderful woman in the world. We

14:33

fell in love, and after a magical

14:35

courtship, we got married. Soon

14:38

she became not just my first lady,

14:40

but the first lady of Arkansas, and

14:42

then of all the United States. Today,

14:45

nineteen years after that beautiful day

14:48

we joined our lives together. She's

14:50

still my first lady, and

14:52

our lives remain what you might call a dance

14:54

of love. So would you please

14:56

play Love Me Tender for

14:58

Hillary? It's one of her favorites.

15:01

I want to tell her how very much he

15:03

means to me, and to wish her a

15:05

very happy birthday. Sincerely,

15:09

Bill. And then I said,

15:11

Mr President, here's your long distance

15:14

dedication, Love

15:19

me now,

15:23

without a doubt, the most infamous

15:25

long distance dedication of them all was

15:27

the one from September fourteenth. This

15:30

is the dedication which gave life to a very

15:33

famous outtake which has made its way around

15:35

the Internet over the past couple of decades.

15:38

The Three Sister Hopeful Trio formed

15:40

in nineteen sixty nine in Oakland, California.

15:43

They have their fourteenth Top forty hit at

15:45

number thirteen, moving up a couple of notches.

15:47

That's Dearemy by the Pointer sisters,

15:50

Ruth, June and Anita. This

15:52

is Casey Cason on American Top forty

15:54

in Hollywood. Well, now

15:57

we're up to our long distance dedication

15:59

and this one is about kids and pets

16:01

and the situation that we can all understand.

16:04

Whether we have kids or pets, are either. It's

16:06

from a man in Cincinnati, Ohio, and

16:08

here's what he writes, Dear Casey,

16:10

this may seem to be a strange dedication request,

16:13

but I'm quite sincere and it will mean a

16:15

lot if you play it. Recently, there

16:17

was a death in our family. He was a little

16:19

dog named Snuggles. But he was most

16:21

certainly a part of let's gonna start again from

16:24

coming out of the record. Play the record, okay, Please

16:32

see when you come out of those up tempo goddamn numbers,

16:35

Man, is impossible to make those transitions,

16:37

and then you got to go into somebody dying. You

16:39

know, they do this to me all the time. I don't know what the hell

16:41

they do it for, but god damn it, if we can't come out

16:43

of a slow record, I don't understand it is

16:45

down on the phone. Okay. I want

16:48

a god damn concerted effort to come out of a

16:50

record that isn't a fucking up tempo record.

16:52

Every time I do a goddamn death dedication,

16:55

now make it. And I also want to know what happened

16:58

to the pictures I was supposed to see this week since

17:00

a dot last god damn time. I want

17:02

somebody to use his fucking brain to not come

17:04

out of a god damn record that

17:07

is uh that that's up, Camper, and I gotta talk about

17:09

a dog dying. Some

17:11

people hear that outtake and think it exposes

17:14

nice guy Casey Cayson as a profanity

17:16

spewing tyrant. But you could also

17:19

hear it as the frustration of a perfectionist,

17:21

a professional at the top of his field

17:23

who demanded that every element

17:25

of his show be done as well as possible

17:28

and would not tolerate carelessness.

17:30

In any event, Casey regained his composure

17:33

and read the dedication to its completion.

17:35

There was a hit song back in the seventies

17:37

called Shannon. As I recall, it was

17:39

about a dog who swam into the ocean and

17:42

never came back. The song had

17:44

lyrics about finding an island with a tree

17:46

like the one in our backyard. It's

17:48

a nice description of dog heaven. Casey,

17:51

could you please play Shannon and dedicate

17:54

it to my daughters, Kathleen and Ryan. I

17:56

want them to know that Snuggles is resting peacefully

17:59

in his favorite place and still very

18:01

much with the rest of the family. Okay,

18:06

well, get your wrong distance to give.

18:09

Casey Cayson continued hosting American

18:12

Top forty up until two thousand and

18:14

nine, although by that point the show changed

18:16

names a few times and was ultimately

18:18

reduced to a Top twenty countdown. But

18:20

through it all he continued to read long

18:22

distance dedications every week

18:25

until he finally retired from the show at age

18:27

seventy seven. William

18:29

Faulkner famously wrote, the

18:31

past is never dead. It's

18:33

not even past. You

18:35

can still hear reruns of Casey Cayson's

18:37

American Top forty broadcast in a

18:39

few places, including the I Heart Radio

18:41

app and Sirius XM seventies channel.

18:44

The show has a dedicated following, and there's

18:46

a robust Twitter group that tweets commentary

18:49

around each countdown. I find

18:51

myself a regular listener of American Top

18:53

forty once again, and if the show is from

18:55

September night or later, there

18:58

are always long distance stead occasions.

19:01

I'm less snarky and a lot more sentimental

19:03

than I was as an eighteen year old, and I

19:05

confess that I find some of those dedications

19:07

moving, sometimes leaving me with a lump

19:09

in my throat. And at least once it

19:12

was pure magic. This

19:14

year, on the first weekend of July,

19:17

I was listening to the American Top forty countdown

19:19

from that week in nine seventy nine,

19:21

when Casey grabbed my attention

19:23

with this teaser coming up on a

19:26

T forty, A long distance dedication

19:28

from a young Israeli living on a kibbutz

19:30

in the Negev Desert to a girl named

19:32

Amy whom he met here in the United States

19:34

cases coast to coast.

19:37

Wait a second, could that possibly

19:40

be the memory of having

19:42

written that fictional letter forty three

19:44

years earlier came back to me in a

19:46

flash. Oh my god, I

19:48

swear my heart started to race. I

19:51

quickly pulled out my iPad and opened

19:53

the Voice Memos app. Just stinkcase

19:57

after one more song, this is

19:59

what I heard, case you say, you know, popular

20:01

music touches our lives in more ways

20:03

than we're usually aware of. That's why

20:06

we have a feature on a T forty called

20:08

the Long Distance Dedication, And

20:10

each letter that we read tells its own story,

20:12

like this one. And then Casey

20:15

read the fictional Uvall's letter broken

20:17

English and all, Dear Casey,

20:20

I'm in Israeli living on Kibbutz Katura

20:22

in the Negev Desert, and I'm eighteen

20:24

years old. Two years ago I

20:27

lived in the United States when my father was

20:29

working as a representative there. When

20:31

I was living in USA, I always

20:33

listened to American Top forty. I

20:35

thought it is a nice thing. During

20:38

the summer nineteen seventy seven, I

20:40

was meeting a girl named Amy and we

20:42

became in love. When my family

20:44

moved back to Israel, it was for me

20:47

very hard leaving her because I love her so

20:49

much. We don't have the American

20:51

Top forty in Israel, but I'm hearing

20:53

about your long distance dedication through

20:55

the mail, and I know that Amy listens

20:58

to your show every week. I

21:00

want for you to play Undercover Angel

21:02

by Alan o' day and dedicated to Amy

21:05

because it was our most favorite song that

21:07

we would sing together all the time when I

21:09

was with her. Teller. I am missing

21:11

her very much. Best wishes of

21:13

shalom for my country. Truly,

21:16

you've vollowed, Okay, you've all.

21:18

Here's your long distance dedication to Amy

21:21

somewhere here in America.

21:27

This was so exciting to me. I played

21:30

a teenage prank on Casey Cayson, and

21:32

the payoff came forty three years later.

21:35

Honestly, even though the letter was sent to

21:37

Casey Cayson, it somehow felt

21:39

like I'd received a letter from my

21:41

own younger self. Now, how

21:44

Casey ever got through all that broken English

21:46

with a straight face is beyond me. I

21:48

wonder if there are out takes somewhere

21:51

where he's berating his staff for making him

21:53

read that letter. And let's not forget

21:55

the song was Undercover Angel

21:57

of all things. If you don't understand how

21:59

we'diculous that is, go and listen

22:01

to the song. By the way,

22:04

Casey did make one pronunciation error,

22:06

pronouncing as kia.

22:10

But in any event, I never lived on that Kibutz

22:12

anyway, although I had visited a few times.

22:15

I actually wrote the letter from a remote desert

22:17

town I was living in called Demona. But

22:19

I figured that a kiz was something is Raeli

22:21

that Americans had heard of, and you've

22:24

all living on one might make him seem more

22:26

exotic. I can tell you that the

22:28

A c forty Twitter crowd had a field

22:30

day with that long distance dedication.

22:33

One person wrote that she hoped Amy broke

22:35

up with You've all because only a loser

22:37

would pick Undercover Angel as their

22:40

song. Another tweeter wrote

22:42

that you've all reminded him of the wild

22:44

and crazy guys played by Dan Ackroyd

22:46

and Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live. As

22:49

for me, I was so excited I immediately

22:51

needed to tell someone. I called my wife,

22:54

who was out for a walk, and I started shouting

22:56

into the phone. The greatest thing ever

22:58

just happened through thousand,

23:00

seven hundred long distance dedications,

23:03

some romantic, some modelin,

23:05

and one of me punking Casey case

23:08

In nine nine. While

23:10

there was no Uvall and no Amy for

23:12

Casey to reconnect across the ocean,

23:14

hearing that letter absolutely

23:16

connected me with my eighteen year

23:18

old self. Thanks, Casey,

23:31

I hope you've enjoyed listening to this special episode

23:33

of Speed of Sounds and that it made you smile.

23:36

This episode was executive produced by Lauren

23:39

Bright Checko and Me. Sound

23:41

design and editing was done by Michael Mangini.

23:44

Special thanks to I Heart's Taylor to Coin

23:46

and extra special thanks to Seaun Ross

23:49

and especially to Ron Gerber, who

23:51

generously shared with me episodes from

23:53

his amazing collection of original American

23:56

Top forty broadcasts. You

23:58

can reach me on Twitter at Stevie g Pro.

24:00

Until we meet again, keep looking

24:03

for music that moves you. Speed

24:07

of Sound is a production of I heart Radio.

24:09

For more podcasts for my heart Radio, check

24:11

out the i heart Radio app, Apple

24:13

Podcasts, or wherever you listen

24:16

to your favorite shows.