Wolfman Jack: The “opportunistic renegade” who brought rock ‘n’ roll to the world
We all might know The Wolfman from the horror classic, but in the 1960s, another person used the title and significantly impacted popular culture. Howling down the airwaves as the purveyor of the era’s hottest sounds, this enigmatic character was Wolfman Jack, the raspy-voiced radio DJ who showed the future to many listeners. Self-described as an “opportunistic renegade”, his life was just as bonkers as those of the musicians he made famous.
Born as Robert Weston Smith in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938, Wolfman Jack always found sanctuary in music. As his parents divorced when he was a child, Smith was just old enough to comprehend the complex mass of emotions that come with such a schism. As a result, his father bought him a sizeable Trans-Oceanic radio to keep him from straying. This proved to be a masterstroke from the older Smith. It is certain that when he was face down in divorce paperwork, struggling with how to assuage his son, Smith wouldn’t have comprehended that such a frivolous gift would go on to play a part in a cultural revolution.
Via the radio, Smith became a big fan of the exciting sounds of R&B music and was galvanised by the music that the era’s finest DJs were pushing. The men he credits with paving his path onto the airwaves are the likes of Douglas ‘Jocko’ Henderson, Dr Jive, Alan ‘Moon Dog’ Freed and John R, the first in America to push rock ‘n’ roll to the masses.
In his enthralling autobiography, Have Mercy!, the Wolfman recalled: “I was just another one among the countless legions of white kids who got amazed and irreversibly bopped on the head by the provocative, pulsating, and wonderful music that African-American culture has given us all”.
At age ten, he had his first taste of the joy a DJ can bring to people when he was put in charge of the jukebox when his older sister and friends would dance every night after school. “I loved having a role to play in all this social activity, being somebody who could boost the party atmosphere,” he explained.
Later in life, following a brief stint as a door-to-door salesman, Smith enrolled at the National Academy of Broadcasting in Washington, DC. After graduating in 1960, he worked across the country at different stations. His first attempt at creating a radio character for himself was as ‘Daddy Jules’ at WYOU in Newport News, Virginia. Then, when the station altered its format to that of Muzak and elevator music, he changed his moniker to ‘Roger Gordon and Music in Good Taste’. Yet, that would not stick either. In 1962, he moved to KCIJ/1050 in Shreveport, Louisiana, as the station manager and morning DJ, named ‘Big Smith with the Records’.
During this period, Robert Smith would begin transitioning into his final form, Wolfman Jack. Taking inspiration from Alan Freed, who called himself ‘Moon Dog’ after the iconic New York City musician Moondog and recorded a howl to give his early broadcasts a distinctive pull, Smith called himself Wolfman Jack and began incorporating his own sound effects into his show. His character would also draw heavily from the style of influential bluesman Howlin’ Wolf. In addition to Smith’s love of early horror films and playing ‘The Wolf Man’ with his young nephews, these two figures served as the basis for his now iconic character. Affording a little street cred to his name, he added ‘Jack’, taken from the jiving hipster slang of the 1950s.
In 1963, Wolfman Jack would start to become the legend he is known as today. Moving to the border region, he was hired to the studio and transmitter site of XERF-AM at Ciudad Acuña in Mexico. The station was a border blaster, with a high-powered broadcast of 150,000 watts, three times that of the US limit. This meant that Wolfman Jack could enter the homes of so many with his show. According to him, XERF had the most powerful signal in North America, to the extent that birds died when flying too close to the mast. Allegedly, Europe, the Soviet Union and South Africa picked up his signal. At his peak, over 2,000 radio stations in 53 countries heard his howling sounds.
At XERF, Wolfman Jack developed his signature form of delivery and coined classic phrases such as “Who’s this on the Wolfman telephone?” and became famous. Reflecting the rookie nature of the border stations, they made money by renting time to preachers and psychics and taking 50% of the profits from an array of items sold by mail order. This meant that alongside blasting the most exciting music of the day worldwide, the Wolfman would pitch dog food, weight-loss pills and even baby chicks to listeners. He also advertised sex drive-enhancer Florex, strangely quipping, “Some zing for your ling nuts”. Ironically, and in a testament to how quickly he took off, he was only at XERF for eight months.
Later, Wolfman Jack worked for XERB in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. However, when the Mexican government banned Pentecostal preachers from the airwaves thanks to pressure from the Catholic church, 80% of the network’s revenue disappeared overnight. Showing his enterprising nature, though, the Wolfman edited his old XERB tapes as they were highly in demand. He accounted for his lost earnings by selling them to radio stations across America, making it one of the first syndicated radio programmes for rock ‘n’ roll. Due to this, his howl would become famed as the seal of approval for new artists. Imploring fans to listen well, he’d say if they didn’t, the “Wolfman’s gonna come and getcha. Do ya understand?”
Part of Wolfman Jack’s success was his mystique. In the early days, when he was establishing his name as the purveyor of the most sizzling new music, he sporadically appeared in public, and when he did, he would be the master of ceremonies for bands at shows in Los Angeles. With each appearance, he would look different, as, during this period, he had yet to decide what the Wolfman’s aesthetic should be.
Some photographs from the time show him with a goatee, whereas in others, and problematically through the contemporary lens, he donned dark makeup to appear what he described as “ethnic”. Elsewhere, he would also wear a big afro and oversized sunglasses. Another testament to the social condition of the era, the ambiguity surrounding his race, caused a stir, adding to his programme’s notoriety and fame.
Finally, fans would see his final form when he appeared in the 1969 movie A Session with the Committee. “Nobody knew if I was white or black or whatever,” Wolfman Jack explained to Time magazine in 1973, “and I kept the mystique. No pictures, no interviews.”
Wolfman Jack’s life was so unbelievable, straddling the line between fact and fiction, that he even claimed to have been involved in a gunfight when working in Mexico. “I didn’t know there were so many ways that being a disc jockey could get hazardous to your health,” he commented later.
In the book Border Radio, he said: “So I jumped in my Starfire Oldsmobile convertible and boogied across the border, spreadin’ hundred-dollar bills all over the place. I got the sheriff and guys in garbage trucks and ridin’ scooters and on horseback, maybe about forty people, to go out to the station to save those boys out there that was protectin’ it. Just as we started comin’ over the hill, the sun was comin’ up and these guys were circlin’ the station like Indians would circle a wagon train fortress or somethin’.”
“You could see the dust around the station from horses ridin’ around,” he added. “So we come over the hill, over the horizon, whoopin’ and hollerin’, and they saw us comin’ and took off. Luckily, there was no one got seriously hurt on our side. There was one person got killed on their side, shot right between the eyes. But they attacked us, you know, so nobody went to jail. It cost me about five hundred dollars to have it forgotten about. Anyway, they never came back, and I was in control of XERF.”
Wolfman Jack was not just a DJ; he started his musical career at KUXL Radio in 1965. He recorded his album Boogie with the Wolfman with the help of George Garrett and later released the likes of 1972’s Wolfman Jack and the following year’s Through the Ages.
In a testament to his importance to the era, in George Lucas’ nostalgic 1973 movie American Graffiti, which reflected on the rock ‘n’ roll culture of young people in the early 1960s, Wolfman Jack appeared as himself, giving a tangible feeling to it. The film was such a success that the Wolfman earned a regular income from the “point” the director gave him for the rest of his life. Elsewhere, some of the most prominent figures who rose out of the culture American Graffiti depicted, such as The Doors leader Jim Morrison, the Grateful Dead and Todd Rundgren, would all pay homage to the great DJ in their work.
Listen to Wolfman Jack in action below.
