Re: Payola Scandals

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 10:48 PM 4/21/97 +0000, you wrote:
>> Yes, in American Graffiti, Wolfman Jack (who actually appeared in the
>film)
>> was transported from Mexican border blaster XERB (1090) in Rosarita Beach
>> south of Tijuana to an unnamed station in an unnamed community in
>> California's Central Valley. 
>
>Was that the station that Don Imus claims to have heard the Wolfman on
>hawking "little baby chicks...and if you buy before midnight tonight you
>get a lifesize poster of the Wolfman......"?  Or was that the Billy Sol
>Hargus story.  
>
No. The little baby chicks were at another border blaster, 250 kW XERF,
1570, in Villa Acuna (there's a tilde--~--over the n but I don't know how to
put tildes over letters on the PC), Coahuila. Villa Acuna is across the Rio
Grande from Del Rio TX. All of the ads on XERF at night were PIs (per
inquiry) and the PO box to which you had to respond was in Del Rio. XERF
really put the sleeply little border town of Del Rio on the map. All over
the South and West, Del Rio was legendary, thanks to XERF's 250 kW ND signal.

For a while in the winter of 1959, just before the late CKLM in Montral went
on the air, you could hear XERF nightly in Boston. I heard this weird voice
on the air--nothing like anything I'd ever heard on the radio before. He was
playing this low-down, funky music, which also was nothing like anything I'd
ever heard on the radio before. He was talking dirty, too. I'd sure never
heard _that_ on the radio before. Then he'd say "Now in the 'ol US of A, I
couldn't say that. But down here in La Republica de Mexico, it's all
root-te-toot!" And he was advertising the strangest stuff. To get any of it,
you had to send money to a PO box in Del Rio TX.

Now I later learned that the voice sounded just like that of Wolfman Jack.
And, of course, the Wolfman _did_ work at XERF. In fact, he originally made
his name at XERF. But this guy was using a different name--Dr JazzMo.
Whether it really was the Wolfman, I don't know. By the winter of 1959, the
Wolfman might already have departed for XERB. Perhaps XERF then went out and
found someone who could imitate the Wolfman. Although there was only one
Wolfman and there will never be another, his voice is not that hard to
imitate. But Dr JazzMo sure sounded like the Wolfman and he certainly was a
brand new listening experience. 

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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