Chuck Riley(1940-2007)

Voiceover artist and disc jockey Chuck Riley was born Charles Daniel Hanks Jr. on July 21, 1940 in Kaplan, Louisiana. The first child born to Charles and Irene Hanks, Riley moved with his family to Duncan, Oklahoma in 1952. Following graduation from high school in 1958, Chuck began his career as a disc jockey at the radio station KOMA in Oklahoma City using the pseudonym Chuck Dann. (He also briefly used the alternate name Charlie Tuna while at KOMA before letting legendary disc jockey Art Ferguson take over said pseudonym.) Riley continued to work as a disc jockey under his Chuck Dann alias for the radio stations CKY-FM in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and WKYC in Cleveland, Ohio. Among the other notable radio stations that Chuck worked for throughout his long and impressive career are KMPC and KBIG in Los Angeles, California; WIBC in Indianapolis, Indiana; WQWB in Fargo, North Dakota; WIGB in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and WQHT in New York City, New York. He got married in 1972 and moved with his family in 1979 to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California, where he soon established himself as one of the top voice artists in the industry. Outside of his work as a disc jockey, Riley also lent his trademark deep, dulcet, and commanding voice to a slew of movies for the studios Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox; narrated various radio documentaries for CHUM 1050 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as well as narrated a bunch of TV commercials, theatrical film trailers, network television promotions, and children's audio books primarily for Disney Read-Alongs, and even provided the stern and solemn narration for the notorious mondo shock documentary The Killing of America (1981). Chuck was still doing voice-overs for KABC-TV in Los Angeles, California at the time of his death from renal complications at age 66 on May 10, 2007 in Sherman Oaks, California. He was survived by his five children.