Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What an iconic voice, what an iconic character. And you
know Wolfman Jack. A little before my time, I saw
this fabulous article which actually sent over to sent over
to Rick Lewis, who has been you know, the the
DJ on our classic rock station, The Fox here for decades.
Uh and and it's the incredibly true story of the
(00:23):
rise of Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Join us to talk about it. This is such a
cool story.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Scott Shay who was a music historian and the author
of the best selling book All the Leaves Are Brown
About the Mamas and Papas. And he's actually a producer
over on I shouldn't mention our competition, but he's a
he's a producer over on Sirius XM. But we're here
to talk to him as a music historian and a
and a DJ historian, and so let's just jump in
(00:48):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I mean, Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
What a character and you know, and what made you
think right about this guy?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, you know, I am a huge fan of Wolfman Jack,
especially those xcrb air checks. You just played one coming
in and that's where he kind of got his start.
He actually started on xcrfter was a border blaster, a
Mexican radio station. But XCRB is really really made his
name and it's featured in an American graffiti. And it
(01:18):
was back around this time nineteen seventy two that he
did his last show as on the Border Blaster. It
was XCRB and had changed to XPRS, and then shortly
after that he moved over to kDa in Los Angeles
and then had the great reveal in American graffiti. So
it's kind of timely, been wanting to write about it
(01:38):
and just waiting for this day.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So the X.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Radio stations are those all Mexican radio stations.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Like we have KNW here.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah, those are all South of the Border Mexican stations.
That's the letter designation that they have received. I think
all of them in Mexico are start with X. I'm
not sure, but I'm I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I bet you're right.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
And there's so much cool than K and W. I
just think it's just so cool.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It is cool. I think I think you're right about that.
So I'm you know, I'm reading his life story and
wolf so let's let's start with growing up. I mean,
his name's not wolfman Jack, right, even though my producer's
name is Dragon Redbeard, and that's really his name, but
Wolfman Jack not so much.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Tell us a little about about his youth.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well, his name is Bob Smith.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So we tried doing research looking up background information for
Bob Smith. It's not easy. But he grew up in Brooklyn.
He's born in the late thirties, I think nineteen thirty eight,
if I'm not mistaken, And he kind of grew up
in a you know, a wealthy home, but a broken home.
His father was like into investing and was the editor
(02:53):
for a for a investment magazine, but his family, you know,
broke apart.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
His family, his parents divorced.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
They actually switched partners with another Couple's really weird story.
But so he kind of retreated to the radio and
rhythm and blues. And he grew up right in the fifties,
in the early to mid fifties, right when rock and
roll was coming on strong, and in the early days,
he was more of an R and B fan, loved
rock and roll. Though worked at the Allen Freed Brooklyn
(03:21):
Paramount shows a few times as a teenager, met Alan
Freed briefly and it just inspired him. Listening to the
radio and listening even to those border blasters back then.
He would listen to XCRF, which was two hundred and
fifty thousand watts, if you can fathom that, and it
just really blasted across the country and almost around the world.
So it just it led him on this journey to
(03:46):
play R and B and bring it to the world,
and he finally did so.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Just historical tangential question, why were there border blasters? Was
it because they could be two hundred and fifty thousand
watts and they couldn't be if they were in America.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I'm just guessing why why did stations like that exist
that were really aiming at the American market but located
in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But I guess that was kind of a deal of
the SEC had made with Mexico. The American wattage power
could not exceed fifty thousand watts, but because you know,
we had big cities and denser population, but in Mexico
they don't have it. They didn't have as big as
population back then, at least not in those northern areas.
(04:31):
Lots of the Chihuahuan Desert was right there, and it
was just there was a fewer people and it needed
larger reach. So they agreed on two hundred and fifty
thousand watts as the max. Most of them were around fifty,
between fifty and one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
XDRC was really the.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Only two hundred and fifty thousand watt one, which is
absolutely ridiculous and un third. And eventually it got to
the agreement that if the only you know, directionally speaking,
when they blasted into the United States, it could only
be pre taped shows. They couldn't do live shows, I
guess for competition, but you know, Wolfman kind of showed
it didn't really need to be lived.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
It's for people to be captivated and entertained.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
When and how did he come up with that character
of Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It was around nineteen sixty three when he was looking
to unveil this character. He had been on the station
in Newport News, Virginia called Wyou and he had broadcast
both under Bob Smith and as Daddy Jules. And that's
kind of where Daddy jeweles characters where he kind of
started to flirt with, you know, having a just a
(05:38):
different you know, just a different persona. And you know
when he got the idea to go to XCRF. He
just wanted something just that was just so different. And
he used to make the Wolfman voices from the Lon
Cheney Junior movies when he played with his nephews, and
he just kind of harkened back to that. And then
(05:59):
Jack was just kind of hip slang, you know, like
hit the road Jack, you know, things like that. So
it's for the early sixties. So he just kind of
combined those two became Wolfman Jack, and you know, debuted.
There's no real like, nobody's ever going to know the Actually,
I don't even think. In his autobiography, Wolfman said when
(06:20):
he started, but it was around December nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And let's go to the end and then we'll come
back to the middle. Just because before you came on
the air, I kind of teased it by saying, you know,
we're to talk about one of the most famous DJs
of all time, and I said, I don't think he's
alive anymore. And as I look at it now, he
actually died thirty years ago. When he died pretty young, right, Yeah,
it's an interesting story. He died in his wife's arms
(06:46):
as he was coming home from a book tour. He
had just put out his autobiography Have Mercy, and was
coming home to his house in North Carolina. Came through
the door and just had a massive heart attack and died,
I believe right then and there. He might may have
died in the hospital, but I think it was one
of those where he just really went as like cardiac arresting,
(07:08):
just right there on the spot. So he was or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
So, uh, you know, it was it was I remember
when that happened. He was I was listening to CBSFM.
I grew up in outside of New York City, and
the CBSFM would have a rock and roll radio Legends
weekend and he had just was on there not that
long before he died, and that was really the only
time I ever got to hear him live.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean he he when he died. He was
a little younger than I am right now.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And yeah, I think it was fifty seven, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So where where did he go? You mentioned a little
bit already, but where did he go? After XDRF?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
He he went to XDRB, which was he had the
studio set up in Los Angeles where he would pre
record his show. But the tower was in Roserito Beach,
Baja California, which is about thirty minutes south of Tijuana.
And that was a fifty thousand watt border blaster. But
they had to put some installed some directional devices on
(08:09):
it too, so it wouldn't go out into the Pacific Ocean.
So it gave it great to reach, almost like the
reach of one hundred and fifty thousand WAT station. And
then after that he went to KJA Kday in Los Angeles,
and then shortly after the movie American Graffiti came out,
WNBC in New York hired him for a nighttime show,
and you know that's when it became a I mean
(08:30):
he was he made a lot of money at XDRB
because he would sell all this all these records and
all this stuff and got a fifty percent profit on
all sales. And he was making like fifty thousand dollars
a week, you know, just on those That's why of
those border blasters were so coveted. You know, people could
make a fortune selling stuff on them. So but you know,
he went back. By the time he went to w
(08:50):
NBC in New York, you know, he was making big
bucks as a DJ.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That's just what you're talking about. And I love the
fact cash checker money order.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
There's no mention of credit.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Card, right, no cash check our money or Yeah, that
could have been the name of his autobiography.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
He said, that's so many times.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
You know, yeah, hit as you say, nearly you mentioned
a Venmo.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, no PayPal, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And you know, the interesting about those XCRB air checks
is there's only a handful of them out there, you know,
there's a there's like maybe seven or eight of them,
and I think only two of them are just are
completely untouched, like the rest of them are been kind
of are like composites. So uh, I think the ones
from sixty six and sixty seven are are are you know,
haven't been touched here that's the actual show.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
There's a link to one of them on my on
my article.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
We're We're talking with Scott Say wrote a great article
about Wolfman Jack and it's this is linked on my blogs.
You can find it easily, but it's at the Strange
brew dot co dot UK. At least that's where I
found it. I don't know if you posted it anywhere else,
but it'sn't called The Incredible it's called The Incredibly True
Story of the Rise of Wolfman Jack. Scott also wrote
(10:05):
a very well reviewed and a good selling book called
All the Leaves Are Brown, How the Mamas and Papas
came together and broke apart. So let me actually, let
me ask you a question that relates to nothing except
what you and I were talking about off the air.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
For a minute, Scott's gonna.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Switch away from Wolfmanjack, but then we'll come back to agreement.
So I told you that I interview a lot of
interesting people and occasional famous people, and I'm never, you know, nervous.
I don't get starstruck. I don't think i'd be. I
don't think i'd be nervous if I were talking to
the President of the United States. But the one time
that I felt just a little bit starstruck was when
(10:43):
I interviewed John Anderson, the lead singer of Yes, because
that was the music I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And I'm wondering, what's the story like that for you.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You're a music historian, so you would have talked to
infinitely more you know, rock stars and so on.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Than I would have. So just tell us one story
like that for you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well, you know, there's you know, there's a few of them,
but I would say for this, you know, I'm such
a Wolfman Jack fan and a radio guy because, like
you said, I do work for Serious XM. I've been
in radio for twenty years. And I got in touch
with Lonnie Napier for this article. And Lonnie Napier was
Wolfman Jack's board op engineer and then at XCRB back
(11:24):
in those days. And I was just so honored when
when I reached out to him and he got back
to me, and you know we've kind of forged a
bit of a friendship.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
So you know, that's that's pretty interesting. You know, working
at Serious, I remember seeing Sting one time.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I didn't interview him, but I walked and I looked
and that we had this big glass the studio, in
the glass and case studio, and I see Sting sitting there. Now,
I'm not the biggest Sting fan in the world. I
do love the police, but when you see somebody like that, yeah,
you know, like that you've seen all your life.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
It's just like I had to stop and look just
for a second.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
You know, little dude, little these things a little dude.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, And he was he was sitting on a stool
playing a bass, so I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm with you. I'm a much bigger police fan than
Sting fan.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
But Sting's all right. I saw him in concert. He's
good and he does some police. So when you when
you met or did you meet in person with Wolfman
Jack's board up with Lennie?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Did you meet him or.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Just connected by phone? Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And would would he be like eighty or ninety?
Speaker 4 (12:28):
No, he was.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
He's in his early seventies, early to mid seventies. He's okay,
he was nineteen when he started with Wolfman Jack, just
just out of high school, did a little bit of broadcasting.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
School.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Has a great story about how he got involved with
Wolfman Jack. But you know, it's to meet somebody who
was that involves you know, because Wolfman Jack the story,
the mystery. That's why I say I think he's the
greatest DJ because he had the energy and the passion
that a lot of them have. But he had that
mystery because for like ten years, nobody knew who he was,
(13:02):
where he was broadcasting, from, what color he was, what
his ethnicity was.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yes, yeah, so it's uh, you.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Know that that that third element is something that nobody
else has.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
All right, let's so let's just finish up with just
a little bit on that because you you mentioned this earlier,
but it you mentioned this particular thing earlier, but it
plays into what you just said about how people really
didn't know who he was. So that that's a scene
from American Graffiti that you mentioned earlier in the show.
And that's a young Robert Richard Dreyfus, right, rich Yes,
(13:38):
Richard Dreyfus. He looks like he's eighteen or something. And
I don't know how holy, but young Richard Dreyfus in
that movie. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
But tell us a little bit about why that movie.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Is so important for the Wolfman Jack story.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
It was his coming out party, you know, in a
sense he had, like I said, he had not been seen.
He had And there was a Billboard article in sixty
nine that said who he was and what he did.
But you know, when you're a fan of music, you're
not reading articles in Billboard. You're checking out the top
one hundred, you know, and things like that, I said,
mostly a trade journal. So and if you lived in
(14:14):
Los Angeles when he moved to Kday, there were billboards
and our advertisements. People saw who he was, but you know,
he had been heard across the nation, at least on
the West Coast and XCRF. You'd been heard everywhere, but
people didn't know who he was. I remember my dad
telling me about that when when we watched that movie
when I was a kid for the first time. He said,
you know, no, this was the first time anybody saw
(14:34):
what Wolfman Jack look like, you know, and he'd been
around ten years. So, you know, George Lucas and the
writers Willard Hike and Gloria Katz approached the wolf Man.
They included him in the specifically in the screenplay, and
then they approached the kDa why and at him if
he would do it, and he said absolutely.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You know, I think I think the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I think things were starting to get to the point
where he just couldn't keep up the facade anymore, and
he was just kind of ready to be out there,
you know. And and American Graffiti was an incredible outlet.
It's such a great movie. It's a great story. The
movie is really kind of radical for its time in
the way it was filmed, and it has, like you said,
young Richard Dreyfus that also has young Suzanne Summers, Young
(15:15):
Harrison Ford, Young Ron Howard, Paula Matt plays one of
the greatest movie characters ever, John Miners, so it's just
a great movie. And he supplies the soundtrack, and he's
a common thread that ties all the storylines together.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Scott Jay is music historian, author of the best selling
book All the Leaves Are Brown, How the Mamas and
Papas Came together and broke apart, and this fantastic article
entitled The incredibly true Story of the Rise of Wolfman Jack.
Thanks a lot Scott appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Thank you. Ross
What an iconic voice, what an iconic character. And you
know Wolfman Jack. A little before my time, I saw
this fabulous article which actually sent over to sent over
to Rick Lewis, who has been you know, the the
DJ on our classic rock station, The Fox here for decades.
Uh and and it's the incredibly true story of the
(00:23):
rise of Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Join us to talk about it. This is such a
cool story.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Scott Shay who was a music historian and the author
of the best selling book All the Leaves Are Brown
About the Mamas and Papas. And he's actually a producer
over on I shouldn't mention our competition, but he's a
he's a producer over on Sirius XM. But we're here
to talk to him as a music historian and a
and a DJ historian, and so let's just jump in
(00:48):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I mean, Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
What a character and you know, and what made you
think right about this guy?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, you know, I am a huge fan of Wolfman Jack,
especially those xcrb air checks. You just played one coming
in and that's where he kind of got his start.
He actually started on xcrfter was a border blaster, a
Mexican radio station. But XCRB is really really made his
name and it's featured in an American graffiti. And it
(01:18):
was back around this time nineteen seventy two that he
did his last show as on the Border Blaster. It
was XCRB and had changed to XPRS, and then shortly
after that he moved over to kDa in Los Angeles
and then had the great reveal in American graffiti. So
it's kind of timely, been wanting to write about it
(01:38):
and just waiting for this day.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So the X.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Radio stations are those all Mexican radio stations.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Like we have KNW here.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah, those are all South of the Border Mexican stations.
That's the letter designation that they have received. I think
all of them in Mexico are start with X. I'm
not sure, but I'm I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I bet you're right.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
And there's so much cool than K and W. I
just think it's just so cool.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It is cool. I think I think you're right about that.
So I'm you know, I'm reading his life story and
wolf so let's let's start with growing up. I mean,
his name's not wolfman Jack, right, even though my producer's
name is Dragon Redbeard, and that's really his name, but
Wolfman Jack not so much.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Tell us a little about about his youth.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well, his name is Bob Smith.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So we tried doing research looking up background information for
Bob Smith. It's not easy. But he grew up in Brooklyn.
He's born in the late thirties, I think nineteen thirty eight,
if I'm not mistaken, And he kind of grew up
in a you know, a wealthy home, but a broken home.
His father was like into investing and was the editor
(02:53):
for a for a investment magazine, but his family, you know,
broke apart.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
His family, his parents divorced.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
They actually switched partners with another Couple's really weird story.
But so he kind of retreated to the radio and
rhythm and blues. And he grew up right in the fifties,
in the early to mid fifties, right when rock and
roll was coming on strong, and in the early days,
he was more of an R and B fan, loved
rock and roll. Though worked at the Allen Freed Brooklyn
(03:21):
Paramount shows a few times as a teenager, met Alan
Freed briefly and it just inspired him. Listening to the
radio and listening even to those border blasters back then.
He would listen to XCRF, which was two hundred and
fifty thousand watts, if you can fathom that, and it
just really blasted across the country and almost around the world.
So it just it led him on this journey to
(03:46):
play R and B and bring it to the world,
and he finally did so.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Just historical tangential question, why were there border blasters? Was
it because they could be two hundred and fifty thousand
watts and they couldn't be if they were in America.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I'm just guessing why why did stations like that exist
that were really aiming at the American market but located
in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But I guess that was kind of a deal of
the SEC had made with Mexico. The American wattage power
could not exceed fifty thousand watts, but because you know,
we had big cities and denser population, but in Mexico
they don't have it. They didn't have as big as
population back then, at least not in those northern areas.
(04:31):
Lots of the Chihuahuan Desert was right there, and it
was just there was a fewer people and it needed
larger reach. So they agreed on two hundred and fifty
thousand watts as the max. Most of them were around fifty,
between fifty and one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
XDRC was really the.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Only two hundred and fifty thousand watt one, which is
absolutely ridiculous and un third. And eventually it got to
the agreement that if the only you know, directionally speaking,
when they blasted into the United States, it could only
be pre taped shows. They couldn't do live shows, I
guess for competition, but you know, Wolfman kind of showed
it didn't really need to be lived.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
It's for people to be captivated and entertained.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
When and how did he come up with that character
of Wolfman Jack.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It was around nineteen sixty three when he was looking
to unveil this character. He had been on the station
in Newport News, Virginia called Wyou and he had broadcast
both under Bob Smith and as Daddy Jules. And that's
kind of where Daddy jeweles characters where he kind of
started to flirt with, you know, having a just a
(05:38):
different you know, just a different persona. And you know
when he got the idea to go to XCRF. He
just wanted something just that was just so different. And
he used to make the Wolfman voices from the Lon
Cheney Junior movies when he played with his nephews, and
he just kind of harkened back to that. And then
(05:59):
Jack was just kind of hip slang, you know, like
hit the road Jack, you know, things like that. So
it's for the early sixties. So he just kind of
combined those two became Wolfman Jack, and you know, debuted.
There's no real like, nobody's ever going to know the Actually,
I don't even think. In his autobiography, Wolfman said when
(06:20):
he started, but it was around December nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And let's go to the end and then we'll come
back to the middle. Just because before you came on
the air, I kind of teased it by saying, you know,
we're to talk about one of the most famous DJs
of all time, and I said, I don't think he's
alive anymore. And as I look at it now, he
actually died thirty years ago. When he died pretty young, right, Yeah,
it's an interesting story. He died in his wife's arms
(06:46):
as he was coming home from a book tour. He
had just put out his autobiography Have Mercy, and was
coming home to his house in North Carolina. Came through
the door and just had a massive heart attack and died,
I believe right then and there. He might may have
died in the hospital, but I think it was one
of those where he just really went as like cardiac arresting,
(07:08):
just right there on the spot. So he was or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
So, uh, you know, it was it was I remember
when that happened. He was I was listening to CBSFM.
I grew up in outside of New York City, and
the CBSFM would have a rock and roll radio Legends
weekend and he had just was on there not that
long before he died, and that was really the only
time I ever got to hear him live.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean he he when he died. He was
a little younger than I am right now.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And yeah, I think it was fifty seven, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So where where did he go? You mentioned a little
bit already, but where did he go? After XDRF?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
He he went to XDRB, which was he had the
studio set up in Los Angeles where he would pre
record his show. But the tower was in Roserito Beach,
Baja California, which is about thirty minutes south of Tijuana.
And that was a fifty thousand watt border blaster. But
they had to put some installed some directional devices on
(08:09):
it too, so it wouldn't go out into the Pacific Ocean.
So it gave it great to reach, almost like the
reach of one hundred and fifty thousand WAT station. And
then after that he went to KJA Kday in Los Angeles,
and then shortly after the movie American Graffiti came out,
WNBC in New York hired him for a nighttime show,
and you know that's when it became a I mean
(08:30):
he was he made a lot of money at XDRB
because he would sell all this all these records and
all this stuff and got a fifty percent profit on
all sales. And he was making like fifty thousand dollars
a week, you know, just on those That's why of
those border blasters were so coveted. You know, people could
make a fortune selling stuff on them. So but you know,
he went back. By the time he went to w
(08:50):
NBC in New York, you know, he was making big
bucks as a DJ.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That's just what you're talking about. And I love the
fact cash checker money order.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
There's no mention of credit.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Card, right, no cash check our money or Yeah, that
could have been the name of his autobiography.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
He said, that's so many times.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
You know, yeah, hit as you say, nearly you mentioned
a Venmo.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah, no PayPal, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
And you know, the interesting about those XCRB air checks
is there's only a handful of them out there, you know,
there's a there's like maybe seven or eight of them,
and I think only two of them are just are
completely untouched, like the rest of them are been kind
of are like composites. So uh, I think the ones
from sixty six and sixty seven are are are you know,
haven't been touched here that's the actual show.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
There's a link to one of them on my on
my article.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
We're We're talking with Scott Say wrote a great article
about Wolfman Jack and it's this is linked on my blogs.
You can find it easily, but it's at the Strange
brew dot co dot UK. At least that's where I
found it. I don't know if you posted it anywhere else,
but it'sn't called The Incredible it's called The Incredibly True
Story of the Rise of Wolfman Jack. Scott also wrote
(10:05):
a very well reviewed and a good selling book called
All the Leaves Are Brown, How the Mamas and Papas
came together and broke apart. So let me actually, let
me ask you a question that relates to nothing except
what you and I were talking about off the air.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
For a minute, Scott's gonna.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Switch away from Wolfmanjack, but then we'll come back to agreement.
So I told you that I interview a lot of
interesting people and occasional famous people, and I'm never, you know, nervous.
I don't get starstruck. I don't think i'd be. I
don't think i'd be nervous if I were talking to
the President of the United States. But the one time
that I felt just a little bit starstruck was when
(10:43):
I interviewed John Anderson, the lead singer of Yes, because
that was the music I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And I'm wondering, what's the story like that for you.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You're a music historian, so you would have talked to
infinitely more you know, rock stars and so on.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Than I would have. So just tell us one story
like that for you.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well, you know, there's you know, there's a few of them,
but I would say for this, you know, I'm such
a Wolfman Jack fan and a radio guy because, like
you said, I do work for Serious XM. I've been
in radio for twenty years. And I got in touch
with Lonnie Napier for this article. And Lonnie Napier was
Wolfman Jack's board op engineer and then at XCRB back
(11:24):
in those days. And I was just so honored when
when I reached out to him and he got back
to me, and you know we've kind of forged a
bit of a friendship.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
So you know, that's that's pretty interesting. You know, working
at Serious, I remember seeing Sting one time.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I didn't interview him, but I walked and I looked
and that we had this big glass the studio, in
the glass and case studio, and I see Sting sitting there. Now,
I'm not the biggest Sting fan in the world. I
do love the police, but when you see somebody like that, yeah,
you know, like that you've seen all your life.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
It's just like I had to stop and look just
for a second.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
You know, little dude, little these things a little dude.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, And he was he was sitting on a stool
playing a bass, so I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm with you. I'm a much bigger police fan than
Sting fan.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
But Sting's all right. I saw him in concert. He's
good and he does some police. So when you when
you met or did you meet in person with Wolfman
Jack's board up with Lennie?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Did you meet him or.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Just connected by phone? Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And would would he be like eighty or ninety?
Speaker 4 (12:28):
No, he was.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
He's in his early seventies, early to mid seventies. He's okay,
he was nineteen when he started with Wolfman Jack, just
just out of high school, did a little bit of broadcasting.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
School.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Has a great story about how he got involved with
Wolfman Jack. But you know, it's to meet somebody who
was that involves you know, because Wolfman Jack the story,
the mystery. That's why I say I think he's the
greatest DJ because he had the energy and the passion
that a lot of them have. But he had that
mystery because for like ten years, nobody knew who he was,
(13:02):
where he was broadcasting, from, what color he was, what
his ethnicity was.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yes, yeah, so it's uh, you.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Know that that that third element is something that nobody
else has.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
All right, let's so let's just finish up with just
a little bit on that because you you mentioned this earlier,
but it you mentioned this particular thing earlier, but it
plays into what you just said about how people really
didn't know who he was. So that that's a scene
from American Graffiti that you mentioned earlier in the show.
And that's a young Robert Richard Dreyfus, right, rich Yes,
(13:38):
Richard Dreyfus. He looks like he's eighteen or something. And
I don't know how holy, but young Richard Dreyfus in
that movie. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
But tell us a little bit about why that movie.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Is so important for the Wolfman Jack story.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
It was his coming out party, you know, in a
sense he had, like I said, he had not been seen.
He had And there was a Billboard article in sixty
nine that said who he was and what he did.
But you know, when you're a fan of music, you're
not reading articles in Billboard. You're checking out the top
one hundred, you know, and things like that, I said,
mostly a trade journal. So and if you lived in
(14:14):
Los Angeles when he moved to Kday, there were billboards
and our advertisements. People saw who he was, but you know,
he had been heard across the nation, at least on
the West Coast and XCRF. You'd been heard everywhere, but
people didn't know who he was. I remember my dad
telling me about that when when we watched that movie
when I was a kid for the first time. He said,
you know, no, this was the first time anybody saw
(14:34):
what Wolfman Jack look like, you know, and he'd been
around ten years. So, you know, George Lucas and the
writers Willard Hike and Gloria Katz approached the wolf Man.
They included him in the specifically in the screenplay, and
then they approached the kDa why and at him if
he would do it, and he said absolutely.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
You know, I think I think the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
I think things were starting to get to the point
where he just couldn't keep up the facade anymore, and
he was just kind of ready to be out there,
you know. And and American Graffiti was an incredible outlet.
It's such a great movie. It's a great story. The
movie is really kind of radical for its time in
the way it was filmed, and it has, like you said,
young Richard Dreyfus that also has young Suzanne Summers, Young
(15:15):
Harrison Ford, Young Ron Howard, Paula Matt plays one of
the greatest movie characters ever, John Miners, so it's just
a great movie. And he supplies the soundtrack, and he's
a common thread that ties all the storylines together.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Scott Jay is music historian, author of the best selling
book All the Leaves Are Brown, How the Mamas and
Papas Came together and broke apart, and this fantastic article
entitled The incredibly true Story of the Rise of Wolfman Jack.
Thanks a lot Scott appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Thank you. Ross
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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