I have a dream that I am cruising along Mulholland Drive late at night and the Wolfman plays this record over the air, screaming his jive and singing along at the bottom of his lungs.

Full moon tonight, everything’s alright Baby come on back to Wolfman Jack Jflfybo want yourself a day man, well I don’t mind 8^011 just ditch him when the sun goes down Ouse the moon shines bright and everything’s alright jjgjlen the Wolfman, he creeps into town

Mow you maybe want a man who throws 'round his money But he ain’t as cool as Wolfman Jack jMbil you might want yourselfa man who don’t act so funny put he ain’t your fool like Wolfman Jack

I don’t mean to treat you evil {STm just a good boy gone bad But if I catch you after dark walking through the park I’m just liable to do something mad

You maybe think you know what love is about girl But it’s nothing ’till it’s Wolfman Jack And everybody knows, you go round and shout it That your only thrill is Wolfman Jack

I may miss your loving while I’m on my back But you can’t escape from Wolfman Jack Look me in the eyes baby, now you cut that jive You know the Wolfman just about the number one cat alive You got my great big eyes spinning ’round in my head How could you love another man instead?

Todd Rundgren

© Copyright, Earmark Music/Screen Gems Columbia Music (BMI) (lyrics reprinted by permission)

Wolfman Jack Radiophonic Svengali of Teenage Minds from Bangor to San Diego. Finally Shows His Face

by Tim Tyler

When I got to Wolfman Jack’s, he was already into his act, taping the three-hour radio show he does every day, sitting in his Spanish baroque den-studio, bare toes deep in the shag, of him twitching, surrounded by dials, spinning turntables, speakers, mikes, and. little lights...

1~MMfman punched a bUtton Ofl IS control panel and his show's ibgo-tape poppei... on.: "Heah come. da M.~d.iman, don t touch dat thai and over the them sUng Caine the voices of T[[na Turner, Little Richard, and the Osmom... Brothers, plugging Woilman: Jack for all they ere w .orth. :th(n : his eyes i~oUi:nt above that. silly goatee, his earphones mashing down his:.bouffänt hairdo1 into a huge crestmg breaker headrngfcr the back p•Uhis head, with exquisite timing, Wolfman broke into the. tail of the sang with his inimitable, low, `bláek-~uan's &OWi, most instantly, recognizable V()1CC on radio, "DO U TO IT, BAA AABLJFJ. - We gotta whole lotta yow/) soul comin' atcha. . . We got Nifllftlliulfllson., bab.u:h. . " And I was Ejgh~• :there, watching the Wolf man work, produce that strange, raspy, semihuman voice, which has brought more soul sounds to more black and white jc4ds than any other deejay, booming cut of uge-kilowatt, high .iy secret sth,tk,n south of the border anø spreading late at night, ,s local stations start to ... off, to kids.' radios aU, the way up to nada, bñn~ng them the sounds,..

As the. NUsson revord starts to spin, he breathes, "Los Angeles, I need you, will you lay you.r hand on de radio for me raht now and feeeeel me. . Brother Nilsson Schmilison, you under stand., " As the record's intro., piles into the. opening line, he is getting out his last words: "Jump intO:, it and do it to it, baaaabuh'~" And he pulls off at the precise moment Nilsson intones, and his show is off and running, Wolf man chainsmoking., eyes popping, his whole body b~uncing with the Nilsson rocker, his hands flicking up, adj.ustin~ dials, readying the next record on the number twc... turntable, roiling it forward until the sound starts, then swinging it back just a quarter of a turn away tram the sound, so that when the turntable starts moving it will have hit exactly 45 RPM before the music comes on, and Woliman builds up steam - - can't quite wait tar the song to end, cuts in with his trademark, his crazy high wheezing laugh, like a consumptive fat old black bartender down in Watts really getting it on with his asthmal ic wheeze-laugh for his customers. `l'hen, while the Nilsson song winds up some more, he gives his deep, deep grunt .nd groan, like a basso profundo getting off on an exceptional chick, and he says, way down, "Oh, mercy, baahuh," and almost simul taneously, with the Nilsson song still winding down, he punches a button on a tape deck above him and one of his Can ned, meted ii' ty low-register foghorn VOiccs comes on saying~ `Riiiiiiiiiiiight on nnnnnnnnnrL"

With the Nilsson song's final b because he next record starts fast an~ he can't taik aver its opening, he says, "Jackie Wilson, evruhbodulL" And spins into nuinb~r two, flips h~ tnik off, lcan-\ hack, and grunts way down, like a rooting pig. Takes a qi~ick~ dra and back to work, because you do yt work during the records. Slips "right-on" tape out of the deck slot. reptaces it with a tape for McDonald' hamburgers. Talks a little, jokes, thei~ it's time for the Jackie Wilson song to f~i~1e' nut.

With the song still raging, he injects: "Oh . my * " and he claps, fingerpops into the fuzLed-over mike espe cially tor his hands, kind "Oh, mercuh - Jackie Wilson * * Now we gonna lay some Juuuuuuv on yuh, you under stand? The Isley Brothers

As the next sc~ng fades, Wo~1mafl gruntS rh ythmiC~1lY, voicC tower than huntafl~ a pig in heat, with the fadeout drums `Uh_UhU1l~u1 . yeahhh. . ." Then it's a song b) I)r. John. and, Dr. John being an oki friend with a not th~sinii1ar crazy.wildh0~ inan~ approach to life, Wolfman really inro this song, really steals the ending from him: claps his hand over his face to get into it, clamps his eyes tight shut, pounds the counter. repeats the cathartic chorus: "Iko 11w Bombay Iko Bedo Bombay," repeats~ and repeals, throwing his arms in the air, pounding clappi rtg. sending high wheeze-giggles through the studio, screeching, wailing grunting. moaning. . - [[hen. to his Lis ten cr5:

"Dr. John saves aU his toenails. man, in a big jar. (High voieelcs~ wheeLe-gi~g1e~ if you got some toe nails. cend `em to inc. you unnn~r stand? So when he comes to see me 111 have something to show him, you dig?"

WolffliarfS daughter, Joy. gets oil inc OOIbUS outside~ comes in. l~isses her daddy heflo. My little joy." WOJfmaa gels sentimental then and as an Aretha single fades away. h~comeS with his seriou~. soft. romantic (hut still low low down) growl: `~iou kna~V. when you've f~illen in love, it makes sense to s..ty love is the only thing we alt have in common and when OU 1OV~,. .YOU live .. ." lie slips intO a slow romanth SOmLbY the Stylistics.

He puts on a mail-order ad for the Soulful Oldie Package of Memories, black versions of those salvaged `SO's records all in one package. Then, he ggles way high up, shooting his one arm up in the air to get out the giggle: "Ohhhhh., we gonna blow youah mind," He tenses, hunches his whole body way down tight in the chair lets out a highly compressed growl-scream that could truly come from a Wolfman, punches a button on the tape deck releasing another canned Wolfrnan howl, this one with echoes and reserberations, and spins `~What'd I Say" (the long version) by Rare Earth. Then, another canned ad, for a soulfood place in Los Angeles.

"Featuring M~rna~s Gumbo every Friday, and on Sundays, Mama's ownnu special recipt~ of chitter~Iing'~ Remember. the Flying Fox. on Santa Barbara Blvd

As a James Brown tadt's out. nonse~si cally. OhhhIi. 1 can see Super-Squirrel standing there. doin' his thing."

Now fs time for the fun: Wolfman Telephone Hour. He has 5O~OOO listeni2r calls on tapes and be shps them intu Ith shows whenever the mood takes him: `~l'm gonna call up onea those gay social clubs, those s~ss~ clubs, you unner stand?" (He giggles high, shoots that arm up in the air, dissolves in his chair, starts singing as he dials the phone, `Tm goima call a sissy club.")

"Hello?" )F~/~ Is dis oneet doze .cocia~ clubs? "Yes." Well, what do I gotta do to get in? `Well. have to meet you." You gotra have money or somethin' or what? "Yes, there's a $ 10 regis tration fee." You give parties al/a time? "We have one party a week." You know, I hcn~e Mis passion for you. ``For what?????" For you. "For rue????" For you. You're beautifuL "Well, I don't know how you could possibly know wiiai I Jook like." I do: you `re beautifuL I lor'c you. "What???' You're beautiful. ``Well, I am b~utiful." Wolfman sings: I Iuv you, I luv you, I Iuv you, kiss me. (Woltman breaks up with rne of his high-wheeze giggles, hand in air.) "Are you recording this? I hear a beep in the background." Kiss me. (He laughs.) Smack, smack, from Wolfrnan's Iips.~ "Good lord. Who the b~l1 are your'

A yuung male voiCe caBs ziflu Wo~fmafl asks: Did you have your pants on? "uh. yeah." You mean you did it with your pantc on? "Oh. No~ never do it with my pants on.~ Vii, whisper, pk'ase. F don't want anybody to hear us. Uh, did you do it in the dark? The kid starts whispering. Woilman breaks up. With his mike of~ he says, `When I g~t people whisperin', man, it’s great. People all over the country lean into their radios real close, so they don’t miss a work.”

Then Woifman goes into his horrorshow routine: “I was tellin* the story of the Blue Ghost with the Purple Pants, and the Lil* Fairy was caught beneath the bed last time, you unnnersfcand . . . well...” He cuts to a tape of the radio version of “The Telltale Heart,” with scary organ music in back, ami the guy narrating: “My heart was growing louder and louder, until, until, (organ music swells) until . .. M And Woifman gives one of his huge belches into the mike:. “BeeeMllUHlcccccch. You unnerstand?”

Woifman reluctantly swings back to records, back into his soul-deejay bag. “Another time,” he tells us between records, “I called Bekins Van and Storage, told ‘cm I had a twelve hundred fifty pound boogaloo that had to be moved .. . said I wanted it moved onto the lawn of the Mormon Tabernacle in Westwood. They figured it was some kind of religious idol, and they took my orderl * * \ «/

When he finishes his three-hour | taping, the chair is nearly demolished, because when Woifman plays these records, he participates, plays all the instruments, grunts, moans, writhes, rolls m that chair, digging his toes into the shag for balance. His manager tells us, “Ue goes through a chair a month.” Woifman turns, and talks.

‘Tin gonna hutta cut somea that stuff out. They won’t let me say whi// or boogaloo anymore.” "Ihis is too bad. But you can’t have everything.

On the good side, this is the first full-length interview Woifman has ever given in his entire meteoric 16-year career as the world’s biggest, most influential black d.j. The secretiveness was mainly because he is white.

At 34, Woifman is slowing just a bit, going legit to the^ extent of cleaning up j his language for the FCC, and coming out m the open for the press. He has also abandoned Mexico, his huge-watt base of operations, the place from [which he doused, radiated the whole G,S. and Canada and Alaska with 2S0,0OO watts of power, five times the legal limit in the U.S., for all those years, drowning out local signals with that insane unmistakalbe Wolf growi, high-pitched giggle-cackle, howling wolf call, duty phone calls, and...good music. Don’t forget the good music, the taste, because without that fee would not be:

Continued on page 77.

*One of the country’s millionaire disc jockeys.

*Only American d.j. right now putting out his own lp of his own (spoken, not sung) songs, made in his own elaborate sound studio, at the same time he is

* Planning his own weekly syndicated TV series.

*Only d.j. syndicated in 28 U.S. markets at the same time he is

^Managing three successful rock ‘n’ roll groups.

’“Putting out and selling his own Wolfman comic book

’“Having short versions of his radio shows syndicated in 1100 stations in the U.S. and 42 foreign countries through the American Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, at the same time he is also

’“Taping and sending Jesus rock shows free to whatever stations will air them.

*Emceeing, in top hat and cloak, a series of Universal Pictures horrorshow marathons in colleges around the country

*Getting people like Jim Brown, in radio interviews, to tell why he threw the white chick off the balcony and how he stuck his tongue in Raquel’s ear.

And, please remember, Wolfman is 34, not 55 William B. Williams and the other bigname jocks. There is no one in Wolfman’s league.

He leans back and relaxes, and he is not altogether different from this grunty wolfish presence he puts out over the airwaves. His sinister goatee moustache puts you off; his great bush of back-swept hair makes him a ’50’s Brooklyn hipster uncorrected by Consciousness Three; yet his pretty blonde wife and his daughter, Joy, 10, and his son, Scott, seven, the comforts of his house and black Cadillac, show him un-Wolfish and downright human. “Don’t cheat on your old lady,” he tells the kids over the air, and he follows the maxim himself. A hood out of the Brooklyn Slums, mellowed out and laid back by the success of his courage, a millionaire too busy to notice it, living now for his wife and kids, private and aloof, no booze, just an occasional reefer to remind him of the old days, smoked with his young (hippie) manager and younger (hippie) sound engineer.

He is pleased to tell you how he got there: born in Brooklyn “amongst the garbage cans an’ roaches and poor Italians an’ poor blacks,” he immediately lost his home, which fragmented in ten different directions leaving him to grow up with his big sister, his aunt, now his mom, now his dad. “I was left out in the breeze,” he recalls.

But it didn’t faze Wolfman (Bob Smith) who ran with a gang called the Taggers, who beat and got beat on, and who spent his time listening to the New York R&B stations and jocks, Tommy Small and Dr. Jive. So much that he picked up on the black accent (“We all emulated the black culture, there wasn’t any other.”) and came out with an accent midway between a fat old black bartender and a white kid from Brooklyn and some subhuman Dr. Johnstyle creole pickaninny — Didn’t faze the Wolfman because he was into that music, into being a vocal personality — to the extent that at 16, having got through only his sophomore year at Manual Training High, he quit to go-fer for radio stations.

Then, at 18, went off to find his fortune, down to Newport News, Va. where he got a job as a jock on 500 watt stations, WYOU, then bounced on down to Shreveport, La. to KCIJ, 250 watts, a station going broke. He bought a piece of it for a small down payment from WYOU money. He became its general manager as well as top jock, getting a piece of the revenues. The station was small, but “We merged with a 5,000 watt station, went on their frequency, and by the time I got outta there, I owned mosta the station. I eventually sold out for $450,000.”

“Now when I was in Shreveport, XERF came in real good. Now let me explain. There’s four Mexican powerhouses: XERF, with all those crazy preachers, 250,000 watts. XELO, with 150,000 watts, and XEG, with 100,000. And XERB, that’s the Soul Express, preachers and soul music, out of Tijuana, Only 50,000 watts but it’s directional right up the West Coast, into Alaska, so it covers 80,000,000 people. Well, I went to XERF in 1957, which was across the border from Del Rio, Texas. That was where I started using the name Wolfman. Before that I was Big Smith or Daddy Jules. My voice was always raspy and black like that, I had a mixture of a New York and southern accent. On XERF, I was pn midnight to four a.m. But I made a deal with the Mexican owners that I’d get their mail order business together, and sell the time myself. Now you gotta understand, with onea those Mexican powerhouses hittin’ all over the U.S. and on up to Alaska — they even caught my show in Korea once — you gotta lotta mail order business. No local advertisers, so gotta be mail order. Now these Mexicans was already makin’ a killing, with these religious nuts preachin’ and havin’ people send in for things but I put together my own deals, like Forty Goldie Oldies, 40 songs, $6. I made fifty cents a record, the station would get two and everybody was happy. That was all the money I got, no salary.

“Another time, I sold baby chickens. 300 of ’em for $3.50. Of course, when they arrived, halfa them was dead, but what was left, they’d raise and eat, they could eat for a year, plus have the eggs. Of course, when the chickens arrived, you’d have to pay another $6 for mailing 300 chickens through the mail, but it still wasn’t a bad deal. I also mailordered weight-pills: Mor-Wate and K-12, that was for losing it. And burial insurance, we had a lotta that, and life insurance for $4 a year, that really worked.

“Sometimes, I got as many as 4,000 goldie oldie orders in a day, and at a quarter or four bits an order, I was living pretty well, in Del Rio. I was there 8 years.

“But at XERF we had this problem. Those were the days after Dr. Brinkley, he was the doctor on XERF who said he could give you masculinity by puttin’ part of a goat’s gland in with your testicles, and people was cornin’ from all over the states for the operation an’ cornin’ outta there feelin’ their muscles — it really worked, because it’s all in the head, you unnerstand — anyway, all these preacher types was on a contract for life, they would get a sharea the station’s profits every month — the Mexican owner, Arturo Gonzales, was doin’ $60,000 a month revenue, but he went into receivership so he wouldn’t have to pay all that cash. So me an’ the preachers sorta took over, we kept on operatin’ the station and Gonzales was mad. We set up the station like a fort, we had sandbags and barbed wire, a 60mm. machine gun on the roof, pistols, rifles, the whole bit and one night Gonzales’ pistoleers attacked — 50 of them — and the way it came out, unfortunately, was that one of his men was killed, and two of ours wounded.

“But I ran the station four years after that. Then, in ’65, I let Gonzales take over XERF again, and I went over to XERB, down below Tijuana, at Rosarita Beach. I bought it. I was station manager and the only jock. When it wasn’t me, it was preachers. I owned it six years, sold it a year ago January.” (Now its call letters are XPRS, Soul Express.)

XPRS (XERB) owns the west half of the country — 80,000,000 people — every night (in the daytime,' it’s crowded out in some places by local stations, but as locals sign off, XPRS takes on more and more listeners until, in Los Angeles, for instance, by 11 p.m. it is top station in the teenage listener bracket.) “Maybe they’re not steady listeners, but they know who the hell I am, you dig? And with XERF, before that, I covered the whole goddamn enchilada. In all these little podunk towns, across the country, I was cornin’ in there on the ratings — not the top, but getting a slice of the local listeners everywhere, and then late at night, they would all listen to Wolfman.”

“In Mexico,” Wolfman explains, “you can go up to a million watts. And (just as important) you had to go through a hell of a lotta red tape down there to made a complaint.” Mexico provided cover for his precious mystique: “Nobody knew if I was white or black or whatever, and I kept the mystique up: no pictures, no interviews. I turned down some heavy cats, man.” When he did make public appearances, he wore a wig that looked like a small bush, a two-and-a-half-foot mammoth chicano style d.a. and his face was painted all different colors. Then there were the shades, the goatee and the mustache. “And these crazy long fingernails, you dig? People knew I had makeup on, but they didn’t know what the hell was underneath it.”

The material he was pumping out under these ideal circumstances was earcatching. “I was maybe ahead of my time. I would ask, in the ’50’s, ‘How is your boogaloo?’ and I would refer a lot to my dog, who was named Pincus — only the way I said it, people was always misunnerstanning, thinkin’ I was talkin about my penis. And when someone called, I would say, Hello, are you naked?’ Now there’s nothin’ wrong with that, but people would take it wrong, man. I got away with a lotta murder.”

Then there was the music. “I played people like Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, before it was fashionable. I was aiming at a black audience, but I picked up whites too. I played Big Joe Turner, Bobby Day, all the good black oldies.” Wolfman helped create rock'n’roll by putting those sounds in the ears of white kids like Leon Russell, who testifies: “Wolfman taught me the blues.” Kids destined to play rock'n’roll drove the desert somewhere past signoff time listening to this crazy unforgettable howl of soul coming into their cars. They knew it was different because of the inhuman tone, and because of the way it walked all over the records, emitted howls and groans of soul in the mid-song breaks, without damaging the song. It made them unlonely, made them feel good, and it played the kind of black music you could really listen to.

But times change. As Wolfman concedes: “Mail order isn’t so big anymore, man.” Wolfman was doing it all at mailorder XERB — station-managing, ad-selling, deejaying, they were long days. He sold out a year ago January and went into syndication. Which means now he tapes his shows, same as any jock, except he tapes them in his Spanish baroque end high in Beverly Hills, with his wife bringing him coffee, and then sends the tapes out to 28 different stations around the country, each one of which fobs him off as their own local whiz kid. A unique set-up in the business. The stations include the top-rated rocker in Dayton, Ohio, the station in Tyler, Tex. and KDAY, L.A.’s fast — growing and only underground AM station.”

There are other radio “networks,” groups like the Bill Drake chain of stations which follow an identical diet of Top 40 music — but they do it with local jocks. “I’m still a personality, not behind scenes like Drake,” says Wolfman. “I still do my phone calls, I still scream and yell. I feel I’m stronger than Drake, man . . . more influence.”

And he is. After all, Todd Rundgren, Jose Feliciano, Taj Mahal, Leon Russell and John Hartford didn’t write songs about Bill Drake, they wrote songs about Wolfman.

A Wolfman groupie named Jeff Dunas is hanging around Wolfman’s house, and he does his best to describe growing up with Wolfman: “He went right through the record, man. I mean, other jocks might come in on a record, and spoil it, but Wolfman never ruined a record — he added to it, man, he got you goin’ into the sound and then he brought you out . . . Plus, you were always wondering who he really was, what where ... I would call the station and ask about Wolfman, and they would tell me he was eight feet tall and they kept him in a special room, or that no one had ever seen him, or he was all different colors . . . When I wanted to talk to him, I would always have to wait two hours to get through . .. Every kid has his own Wolfman Jack in his head. No two are alike ...”

“The main thing,” interjects Wolfman, “it’s different. The other d.j.s, it was the same songs, same rap. Me, good or bad, I was different.”

Dunas: “And the things he’d say! ‘I’d like to touch you all over.’ The girls went wacky over him. And everybody imitated him. Everybody wanted to be Wolfman.”

On the Wolfman t-shirts he used to sell was one image of Wolfman, a wolf standing on hind legs shuffling along snapping his fingers like a ’50’.s hipster, in vest, shades and beret. Wolfman: “You’re tired of trucking up that highway, you’re all alone, late at night, you’re tired of all that gay d.j. patter shit, you need something different.”

“It’s amazing how many lives I’ve changed,” says Wolfman.. “I try to preach the Golden Rule in amongst the other stuff, and people come to me crying, saying ‘I didn’t know what to do, and you helped me, Wolfman’ — Glen Campbell told me I saved his life one night when he fell asleep at the wheel someplace in Florida and I howled real loud and woke him right up . . . .”

“I try to tell ’em, when you love, you live, an’: Love is not a matter of counting the years, it’s a matter of making the years count, an’: The world out there .. . it’s waiting for you . . . an’ every day it’s gonna bring somethin’ totally . . . new. I try to hit ’em with somea my philosophy, the way I see the world.

“Of course, if a guy calls me and says, ‘I had a fight with my girlfriend, what should I do?’ I’ll say, get naked and run around your bedroom, or I’ll say, stand on your head. Or I’ll call the zoo and try to sell ’em a pregnant giraffe, two for the price of one. Then again, if they have a headache, maybe I’ll tell ’em about the Blue Ghost and the Yella Fairies stickin’ their heads outta the springs.”