Casey's retirement

[brownjb81]

We all know that this weekend is the 50th Anniversary of American Top 40's first show but it is also the 11th anniversary of Casey's retirement from doing his countdown shows. It was the weekend of July 4, 2009 that Casey ended his run of doing countdown shows, which occurred on the 39th anniversary of AT40's first show. Yesterday, as I was listening to the last AT40 show that Casey hosted, which was back in January 2004, it got me thinking about something. If Casey had waited one more year to retire, then he would've been doing syndicated countdown shows for 40 years. Since he had been counting down the 40 biggest hits in the USA since 1970, he would've made it to the 40 year mark and that would've been a great way to go out. 40 hits for 40 years. It would've been great if he had waited one more year and then he could've retired after reaching the 40 year mark. But with his situation with his health at the time, I guess that wasn't possible. Hitting the 40 year mark would've been great nonetheless.

[mkarns]

Going up to "40 years of American Top 40" would have been great, but I think by then Casey's health was declining to the point that it was getting hard to do the weekly shows; there were a lot of guest hosted shows (usually done by Mike Kasem) in his last couple of years, and when Casey did host his voice seemed to show increasing wear or strain. Contractually he was apparently covered by the replays of his old shows which allowed him to stop doing new ones when he wished, but he did at least stick it out until an appropriate July 4 end date.


Even if Casey had continued producing new material into the 2010s, I think he'd probably have retired by now even if still alive and well (he'd be 88), though if he were he might well have recorded some promo segments or reminiscences for the 50th anniversary.