WACKY WEDNESDAY: Songs by The Wolfman
Robert Weston Smith, the disc jockey who became famous as “Wolfman Jack” on a radio station blasting 250,000 watts across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, would have turned 88 years old today.
Happy birthday, Wolfman!
For the last 40-plus years I always know when his birthday rolls around. It’s my daughter’s birthday too.
Happy birthday, Molly!
Smith died and went to Werewolf Heaven in 1995 at the age of 57.
I bet that most people, at least folks around my age, mostly know the gravelly voice of the Wolfman (that voice reportedly inspired by Howlin’ Wolf, though I’ve always detected a touch of Lord Buckley in there too) from his role as co-host of The Midnight Special, NBC, 1973 -1981. Many also know him from his role, playing himself, in American Graffiti (1972).
And many surely are aware of how he got famous spinning R&B, rock and soul from XERF-AM at Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, one of those legendary mega-watt stations right across the U.S. border. Its signal, three times the strength American stations were allowed to have, carrying his voice for thousands of miles across this great land of ours.
Wolfman was only at XERF for a couple of years, 1962-64, leaving after at least two attacks by pistoleros during a period of conflict for control of the station. In the second instance, in January 1964, a man named Gilberto Alvarado was shot and killed. The only direct source for this killing I could find was a Jan. 21 (!), 1964 article in the Del Rio News Herald.
(This piece from a site called Strange Brew, has more details about this radio violence as well as other crazy Wolfman stories. It’s a fun read, but it doesn’t show its sources. So, despite being a self-described “incredibly true story,” you can’t take it as gospel.)
But in addition to being a truly legendary disc jockey and later a national TV personality, Mr. Smith also was something of a recording artist himself.
A few years after his XERF stint, Wolfman took his howls and growls, to other radio stations, both in the U.S. and Mexico.
While working at a station in Minnesota, he recorded a album with a bunch of local musicians — even though the liner notes claim the tracks were recorded “live with the famed Wolf Pack under a full moon on the Mojave Desert.”
The style was similar to the “live-in-the-studio” style of Gary “U.S.” Bonds, Johnny Rivers, The Swingin’ Medallions, etc. and featured mostly R&B covers. But here’s one that appears to be written for this project:
My favorite song on this album is his cover of Huey “Piano” Smith & The Clowns’ classic “Don’t You Just Know It”:
The Wolfpack album was far from a hit. I never even heard of it until nearly 15 years after Smith’s death.
And I just recently learned (earlier this week) that he actually did release a live album from his Peppermint Lounge (Louisiana, not New York) days. Unless of course it was recorded under a full moon on the Mojave Desert. And it’s even lower-fi than his first album. Here’s one of its songs:
He continued making albums in the ‘70s. Here’s a tune called “Diggin’ on Mrs. Jones” from Wolfman Jack’s self-titled 1972 album. It’s funky, but I doubt that George Clinton lost much sleep over it:
And in 1975, Columbia Records released his album Fun & Romance. A review in The Vinyl District said “…it’s Wolfman Jack’s lovable persona, rather than his singing ability, that carries the day on 1975’s Fun & Romance. … There’s something endearing about Wolfman Jack’s amazing inability to hold a tune.”
I totally agree. But my problem with this one is that it seemed Columbia was intent on smoothing as many of Wolfman’s rough edges as possible. Even the album cover is dangerously mediocre, especially compared with the cool psychedelic cover of the 1972 record.
Here’s a Coasters cover from Fun & Romance:
Perhaps the greatest song featuring the voice of Bob Smith came years after his death. This was “Lay Your Hand on the Radio,” a 2012 hip-hop single released by The Wolfman’s estate, featuring clips from his fabled radio daze. Hell. I’d buy a whole album of songs like this:
So as The Guess Who would say, clap for the Wolfman!
