Life and Career
Charles D. Hanks Jr. was born July 21, 1940, in Kaplan, Louisiana. The first child born to Charles and Irene Hanks, he was nicknamed Danny. In 1952, the family moved to Duncan, Oklahoma where he graduated from high school in 1958. He was soon working at radio station KOMA in Oklahoma City, where he was first known as Chuck Dann, then later as Charlie Tuna. (It was at KOMA that Chuck Riley gave a young Art Ferguson his air name -- Charlie Tuna.)
In 1964 he was on the air as Chuck Dann on CKY in Winnipeg. From there he went to WKYC in Cleveland in 1967, again as Chuck Dann.
By 1972, Chuck had married, had a son and was the dominant afternoon drive jock at WIBC in Indianapolis as Chuck Riley, the name he would use from then on. Chuck was also known throughout indiananapolis as the voice WNAP when he did the legendary "The Wrath Of The Buzzard" "TOH" ID.
During his years at WIBC, Chuck would often travel to Toronto, Ontario to narrate various radio documentaries for CHUM 1050. He was first hired to be the imaging voice for the top rated CHUM AM, then in 1969, he narrated a 28 radio special titled "CHUM's History Of Rock". In 1970, he was back in Toronto narrating "The Story Of The Beatles", a 12 hour history of the group that was also syndicated around the world. Then in 1976 came his biggest CHUM project, "The Evolution Of Rock", a 64 hour special that took the listener from the beginning of rock and roll right up to 1976. "The Evolution Of Rock won a prestigious Billboard Magazine Award for International Syndicated Special of the Year. The program was later syndicated around the world by TM Productions in Dallas.
In 1979, Chuck decided to give the Hollywood voiceover game a shot so he moved his family to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Within a year, he was one of the dominant voices in the industry.
In the 80's and 90's he did voice work for KMPC, KBIG Los Angeles, KZLA-KPOL Los Angeles, CKY Winnipeg, KQWB Fargo, N.D., WOGL Oldies 98.1 Philadelphia, WIBG Philadelphia, KVIL Dallas/Ft. Worth, WQHT Hot 97 (Hot 103) New York, and KPWR Power 106/Los Angeles, among others.
In the early 1980s he became the voice of CBS television and Emmis Broadcasting. He went on to do voice work for literally thousands of movies for the studios of Warner Bros., Universal, Fox and Paramount. In 1989, producer Doug Thompson, who'd worked with Chuck at CHUM Toronto moved to Los Angeles and hired Chuck to be the announcer on actor John Candy's weekly two hour radio series, "Radio Kandy" (sic). He also narrated many productions and movies, such as Oliver Stone's Nixon, and CHUM's 1976 documentary The Evolution of Rock, The Killing of America, and Galaxies are Colliding. He narrated hundreds of children's audio books, mainly Disney Read-Alongs, and was an announcer for numerous commercials.
At his death, he was still doing voiceovers for KABC-TV in Los Angeles.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Riley (voice Actor)
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