OT- Youth has a question for the older member.

Not much I can add, but what a great thread! The Wolfman was cool, personified.

 

I'm too young to have heard The Wolfman on the air, but when I was 9 I could sing "Clap For The Wolfman" word for word...


Clap for the wolfman, he gonna rate your record high
Clap for the wolfman, you gonna dig him till the day you die
Clap for the wolfman, he gonna rate your record high (Umm, yes gracious)
Clap for the wolfman, you gonna dig him till the day you die (Heh heh heh, oh wow)

Doo Ron Ron and The Duke of Earl, they were friends of mine
And I was on my moonlight drive
Snuggled in, said "Baby just one kiss.." she said "No, no, no"
"Romance ain't keeping me alive!"
Said "Hey babe, d'you wanna coo, coo, coo?" she said "Ah, ah, ah"
So I was left out in the cold
I said "You're what I've been dreaming of" she said "I don't want to know!"
(Oh you know, she was diggin' the cat on the radio!)

Clap for the wolfman, he gonna rate your record high (Yes baby I gonna, doctor love!)
Clap for the wolfman, you gonna dig him till the day you die
(Everybody's talking about The Wolfman's "pompatous of love")

Seventy-five or eighty miles an hour she hollered "Slow, slow, slow..."
Baby, I can stop right on a dime
I said "Hey baby, give me just one kiss" she said "No, no, no.."
But how was I to bide my time?
Said "Hey babe, d'you wanna coo, coo, coo?" she said "Ah, ah, ah"
Said "I'm about to overload"
I said "You're what I been living for" she said "I don't know want to know!"
(Oh you thought she was diggin' you but she was diggin' me, nyha ha)

Clap for the wolfman, he gonna rate your record high
(As long as you got the curves baby I got the angles)
Clap for the wolfman, you gonna dig him till the day you die
(It's all according to how your boogaloo situation stands, you understand)

Clap for the wolfman, he gonna rate your record high
(You ain't gonna get 'em, 'cause I got 'em)
Clap for the wolfman, you gonna dig him till the day you die
(You might wanna try, but I gonna keep 'em, ain't that right girls?)

Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman
Clap for the wolfman

 

"gimme some of your boo-ga-loo baby, put it in that frypan baby, let it sizzle..."

We picked him up as far south as San Blas, Nayarit on XERB. Later on XPRS. Sounded especially good after I put a reverb in my Ranch Wagon.

 

You can still hear old Wolfman Jack shows on XM radio every weeknight, 60's channel 6. You can also listen online if you're a subscriber. One of the main reasons I pay for XM. I think you can get a free 3 day trial to the online stream, check here:
xmro.xmradio.com/xstream/index.jsp

 

yeah thats true

 

hot damn, so it really was a pirate operation of sorts... i thought they were kidding in graffiti!

 

It was called called border radio. The actual transmitters were in Mexico . They were so powerful they could actually burn a few feet off the tip of their antenna each day. On a good day I could get the signal in ****e, Montana when I was a kid. The wolfman was the king. He made it so easy to picture a real wolfman on the other side of the mike. In those days there were "radio personalities". None were bigger than the wolfman.

 

Driving out 66 on the way to the west coast in the 60's you could pick him up as soon as you got out of Okla. You could also get KOMA and WLS. AM radio only FM was talk or Cl***ic's. Good times America was a different place, the only constant is change.

 

The Wolfman and **** Biondi. Too bad the youth of today couldn't have experienced them.

Frank

 

I was at work the other day and EDS has radio stations blocked on our computers. I found another way to listen and it is thru a site called www.radiotime.com If you look for stations in the "oldies" catagory at the bottom of the 1st page you will find a station from Vancouver or Richmond, BC, Canada...CISL. That station plays the "Wolfman Jack Show" on Saturday nights form 7pm till midnight pacific time. They claim that they are the original recordings.
Think I read that they have over 300. That's about 6 years worth folks.!!

 

**** man...I remember listening to WLS way the hell up here when I was a kid! Laying in bed,dreaming of what was yet to come.Who knew what the future held but rock and roll took any worries away.....

 

Wolfman Jack did a lot of phone prank calls, but the best one was on him
Kid on phone "hey wolfman wanna hear about the latest high?"
Wolfman "yeah what's that , baby"
Kid " it's desinex foot powder"
Wolfman " whatta ya do? do ya snort it?"
Kid.."no man, you geez it!"

 

I went thru a lot of batteries listening to the ole AM under my pillow at night. Listened to WLS, CKLW, WJR, WWL, WBAP, KMOX a**** others. KOMA was hard to pick up here in Michigan for some reason. In 1980 I moved to Moore, OK and was nearly in the shadow of that station where I lived. Course the golden days were a bit of a memory by then. FM was here.

 

I was born in '65 , so I missed most of Wolfman's fun. I do remember hearing him late at night in St. Louis occasionally into the '70s.
Man, Alex, thanks for bringing him up again - extra credit for being young!
Remembering Wolfman reminds me of others I heard or watched - Don Kirchner's rock concert show comes to mind. Late nights channel 11 St Louis! Right before Benny Hill..............

 

We could get Wolfman when the weather was right, and the moon was full. But my every night radio station was WLS and **** Biondi.

I thought I was the only one left that remembered him. I often wondered what became of him.

 

Amen to that

 

"Get your 45 Golden Oldies--Five!-dollars-and-a-quarter: CASH! check! or money-order..." AAAAHHOOOOOoooooooooooooo...

 

Oh, man, the days of Top 40 AM...that omnipresent refrigerator whine in the background, punctuated by the sporadic spikes of static that came from lightning bolts somewhere else in the US...

I listened mostly to KOMA out of Oklahoma City, occasionally tuning to WLS in Chicago, WWL in New Orleans, WOAI in San Antonio, WBAP in Fort Worth, and KFAB in Omaha.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, building an AMT model of an Ed Roth custom, the night the KOMA DJ said, "Here's some guys from England. They call themselves the Beatles, and they have a great new sound. This song is called 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'."

I was driving a '65 Mustang 80 down a moonlit highway the night the DJ said, "Here's a new song from the Beach Boys that's not like anything you've ever heard them do. It's called 'Good Vibrations'."

Remember when the hardest thing on the airwaves was Steppenwolf's "The Pusher"?

 

Hey Bill,
I don't guess you ever cruised the Hi-De-Ho off 4th or the one on 50th did you? (G)
To keep this post on topic, I remember listening to Wolfman Jack on the X (along with Billy Gibbons, I guess) and hearing him advertise autographed pictures of Jesus Christ. Seems they had a guy with the name working at the station and decided to make a few bucks.
Larry T

 

Ive known one Mexican kid who had that name, I had no idea that there were more!

 

thanks for all the info and stories. it made for an interesting read, and it surely answered my questions. did not expect the thread to end up this big.I wish I have stories like this when I end up "not as young".

edit: reviewing the posts, I can see that people have posted from all over the U.S., as well as Canada. That is amazing.

 

I developed my love for R&B music with KGFJ from LA in the daytime and XERB at night. KGFJ had Hunter Han**** and the Magnificent Montague broadcasting from the window of Dolphin's Records on Crenshaw in LA. They advertised BC Headache powder, AfroSheen and all sorts of stuff for the black folks. XERB was where you could hear the Wolfman, Fat Daddy Washington and Brother Prince Dixon, who played hard black gospel like the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Soul Stirrers and the Blind Boys of Alabama. I was deep into what was called Race Records in the early sixties. And Doo Wop too. Wolfman Jack was only into that stuff in the early sixties. When the late sixties hit, all bets were off as psychedelic rock and roll opened peoples minds to everything. In the early and mid sixties bands like the Rolling Stones and Them mainly covered R&B and blues artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Solomon Burke.

Man, you cracked open the memories for me with this. I wore my hair in a big ol' greasy pomp with a DA (duck's ***), had Sir Guy shirts and hung with the black and cholo kids. I looked down on music like Bobby Vee and the Lettermen. It was Gene Chandler, Jackie Wilson, Johnny Otis, Lightnin' Hopkins and Little Walter all the time. My friend and I snuck into the Sun Village Inn and BBQ to see T-Bone Walker when we were 16. I still love that ****. The Wolfman was the pusher to my R&B addiction.

Thanks for taking my mind on a trip to my wild teen years.

 

man i wanna start a outlaw radio station...of course I would probably be hunted down and thrown in jail.
I never really knew who wolfman jack was either but now i learned a little he sounds like a really cool guy and had himself a nice show going. it would be cool to listen to some of his old shows and stuff. i wonder if my dad listened to him? i'll have to ask him.

 

I subscribe to XM just to get the Wolfman. The shows are sliced and diced with not much R&B but his personality breaks through none the less.
Read his autobiography to get the story. XERB wasn't outlaw, it was Mexican and immune to the FCC! It was so powerful that when they parked their cars outside, the lights stayed on!

My uncle once told me that when he was drafted, he drove from LA to Louisiana and never lost the Wolfman.

Back when AM was the signal, it was stronger at night and the cooler evening weather used to push it a loooong way.

Great thread kid. Thanks

 

I saw the XERB promo ad kit and they claimed Wolfman Jack listeners in every state and Alaska. One of the promos was a free (plus postage & handling, "cash check or money order baby")) Wolfman Jack Pillow case.

 

Its funny that George Lucas put the Wolfman's station outside of Modesto. Obviously so they could fit the wolfman in the story. Now the cruising scenes were very very real. I used to cruise the main street in Merced, CA just 20 miles south of Modesto all the time in the late 60's - early 70's.

 

This is a great thread. The memories are so thick you have to cut em with a chainsaw!

 

I met Bob (Wolfman) first in 93 at a local station for which I was chief engineer. A heck of a nice guy and very likable in person unlike many other celebs. His home is a couple of hours away near Bethel. He loved his wife Lou so much he made her hometown his. Lou hasn't been the same since he p***ed away. She called me in 97 and asked me to open his studio and make certain the equipment was in working order. She and Joy were going to try to archive Bob's old tapes and records. I got the studio set up and showed Joy how to operate the equipment. I was struck by how the place had been neglected. I got the impression that the family was not left with much money. A couple of months later I was saddened to hear Joy had died in a car accident. She was a bit on the wild side but a sweet kid.

 

I will never forget the Wolfman's tag line "......dis is da Wolfman on XERB in Choooola Vista California, baby!!!!", Chula Vista is right down near the border and I always heard that hi-powered transmitter was over in Tijuana.

It would really hit even a cheap-*** 2 transistor radio pretty hard!!