A Photographic Retrospective By John Robert Rowlands

Wolfman Jack

 

For all its wattage, XERF was kind of a nowhere station.

It tried the same time-brokered format of Texas radio preachers, yee-hah bands, chatty DJs,

and quack cures, but without Brinkley to pull it off.  It lost money. 

The owner was forever in and out of legal trouble.
Fortunately, Ciudad Acuña still drew larger-than-life figures to its larger-than-life radio.

The next one to happen along was Bob Smith, a skinny white kid from a tough section of Brooklyn,

who had drifted from one southern US station to the next, learning his DJ gig the tough way.

He had one major career problem - he insisted on playing the real, urban blues,

the cynically named "race records" by the original black artists. 

White boys just didn't do that in the late 50s and early 60s - they played the vapid cover versions

aimed at nice Caucasian folks.  In Virginia, it is said, the Klan burned a cross on his lawn. 
That's right - this skinny white kid with the black voice who could reach Canada without

a transmitter was Wolfman Jack, the legendary radio figure who stoked a generation on the blues,

and pretty much invented the sixties.  Yes, he's the guy George Lucas put in the movie. 

Better Lucas should have told the real story though. 

The Wolfman did not hang out in some hayburner sucking Popsicles. 

The Wolfman did not play anything as sissy as the Del-Vikings. 

The one thing he did do was "blast that thing clear around the world," as the dorky actor said.
Now, the Wolfman washed up at XERF during a strike.  He wound up more or less running the place.

XERF's media karma was at work.  Magic was alive.  The owner had defaulted, repeatedly,

on payroll and taxes, and the Federales were getting ready to sieze the station again.  

Somehow, though, Wolfman and others raised the money to keep the border blaster on the air.

They played music people wanted to hear, all the time selling all manner of dubious products on-mike.
Wolfman lived in Del Rio and commuted over the border, his Cadillac filled with recordings and $100 bills. 

With no consultants, no rating books, no focus groups, no audience research, no tests, no wired-up

teenagers holding red and green buttons, none of that crap, he re-invented night time radio.

He plugged it into That Big Amp In The Sky, and cranked it to eleven -

or at least 110% modulation - on his signature howls.  If you were halfway hip in the sixties, you knew where to listen. 

That's all.
There was one problem.  Nobody was quite sure who owned the station. 

Nasty letters were written, death threats were exchanged, and XERF started fitting out a private corps of security guards.

The station stocked up on some gear not normally seen at a broadcast site,

such as automatic weapons and plenty of ammo. The once beautiful transmitter building,

already minus most of its original detailing, became even more like a fort.
Wolfman Jack liked to tell a story about what happened next.

Now, everyone agrees that there was a real, border shootout,

just like in the movies, the DJ diving for cover, bullets flying every which way.

Wolfman, of course, always said he was there, having heard pistol shots on the air,

and broken the speed record down from Del Rio in his Caddy.  Others say he probably wasn't there,

but that the gun battle definitely happened, followed by lots of cops poking around,

lots of investigations and legal complications.  No matter how you want to tell the story, it was not the Wolfman's best year.
Wolfman moved on, as all radio gypsies must, to another border blaster in a marsh by the 

Tijuana River, with a dead shot up to Los Angeles, and yet another emisadora muy grande. 

This was XERB, Rosarito Beach, BC.  XERB's signal could hold its own with such L.A. giants as KFI and KNX,

and certainly had no trouble whatever shooting up the Central Valley as

depicted by George Lucas.  It was perfect setup for the Wolfman. 

Now the mystery man with the huge voice and the good music could own California at night,

and inspire everyone.  The rest is history, and more than one great movie.

 

Photographs of Wolfman Jack by John Robert Rowlands