It’s
ROCK-TOBER! Wolfman Jack LOVED
“Howl”oween, for obvious reasons. His howl lit up the airwaves in 1965, but not
so much in song. It may not have been October, but sometime in 1965 Wolfman Jack and The Wolfpack released
a self-titled album (Bread label), with Wolfman Boogie, Parts 1
& 2.
Robert Weston Smith’s adopted
persona didn’t begin with a rumbling howl and a pumpkin …
Without a trick in sight, this month’s 50 Years Ago tribute is a sweet
Halloween treat! In BFYP’s Book I (1954-1959), we explored Wolfman Jack’s youth. Enjoy the excerpt, and learn about the boy
who became a wolf! Ooooowwwww!
Featured Radio
Survey(s): While Wolfman Jack
made radio history in the West at XERB
1090 / Rosarito Beach, Mexico/Los Angeles, WQAM
/ Miami, Florida, used magic on listeners in the East, with the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Believe in Magic” at #8
on their Fabulous 56 Survey, October
2, 1965.
Celebrate this month 50
years ago and … Enjoy the moment … again!
Share on
Twitter: @BlastFromPastBk
(Altered a tad to make more sense as an
article.)
Have mercy, it’s WJ break-time!
It’s time for a WJ break, here at BFYP-FM.
Yes, a Wolfman Jack story is nigh.
Before there was you … before there was me …
there was a mystery brewin’. At the time of the Alleghany Moon … ♪
Wolfman Jack, You Da Man!
Robert Weston Smith
1938 ~ 1995
Best known around the world.
Let
me introduce you to … Wolfman Jack!
“Bob” was still
finding his way as an unruly teen in the 1950s. His youthful story is crucial,
however, to understanding what powered the ultimate Wolfman.
Our favorite mystifying
DJ gained fame in the 1960s and plowed through the next few decades until his
too-soon death on July 1, 1995, at age 57.
Bob Smith’s rise up
the DJ ladder is told in the words of friends and co-workers, and from his own
tales in a comprehensive autobiography, Have
Mercy! Confessions of the Original Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal. It’s raw and
rebellious, and according to long-time friend, Lonnie Napier, not even half of the whole experience. “It’s just
a fluff piece,” scoffs Lonnie.
Wolfman Jack said of
Have Mercy! “Folks, I’m real nervous
about getting this book right.” I too,
want to do right by Robert Weston Smith, aka Wolfman Jack, and all of the DJs
on these pages. Like many of you, he and they were a part of my youth that I
thoroughly enjoyed. Even after I discovered
he wasn’t Black. Heehee.
In addition to his
lively memoir, to which I sincerely thank Wolfman’s “WolfWoman,” Lou Lamb
Smith, for granting permission to quote, I’ve found some great references and citations
in obscure places that complement my interviews with Lonnie, and Wolfman’s
writer, Frank “Mars” Cotolo that should keep us Rocking & Rolling with the
Wolfman all night long.
Wolfman Jack is one
of the few nationally known DJs who transcends time and geographic locations to
touch nearly every music lover of the era. Because BFYP is dedicated to him, he also is the only DJ whose story
marches beyond 1979.
But if I never wrote
a word about him, you would instantly relate to Wolfman from this one quote in Street Rodder magazine (April 1991): “Back
in ’60, all I wanted was to put my mug close to a microphone and get my vocal
chords vibrating right into that metal ribbon and get it on with everyone who
had a radio in a car or anywhere else. I wanted to pump their ears fulla fun,
rattle their dashboards with romance, and ROCK ‘N’ ROLL …”
And
to read Wolfman Jack’s Have Mercy! is
to listen to him talk in your head. You can hear the deep rattle in his voice,
and feel the words vibrate with his witty personality. Unless
otherwise noted, all quotes are from his book. Though Have
Mercy! is maddeningly vague and scrambled about dates, Wolfman is forgiven
as, like many of us, he admits his memory is a little hazy about the good ol’
days.
The
Early Adventures of Wolfman Jack …
Robert Weston Smith
was a real-life example of budding “bad kid gone good.” The second child of
loving parents, born in Brooklyn January 21, 1938, to Rosamund and Weston
Smith, he blamed the stock market Crash of 1929 for their financial struggles.
As with many
couples, the monetary weight created by rebuilding, forged a marital rift for
the Smiths from which they could not recover. Though moderately improved financially through Bobby’s infant years,
around kindergarten age he became a product of the dreaded “broken home.”
Bob’s creativity
however, was certainly an inherited trait. Riding out the ’29 Crash, dad,
Weston, began writing for Financial World
and the Wall Street Journal in the
mid-1940s. Through his steady rise in status at Financial World Weston introduced his family to film stars and major
TV celebs like Milton Berle and Ernie Kovacs.
Children will never
understand the drama behind divorce—they know only the abandonment and
experience the fear that they somehow caused it—which is usually far from the
truth. Bobby “became a junkie for approval and recognition,” teaching himself
to read people to make sure they like him.
He grew to be the
consummate salesman who always has what you didn’t know you were looking for.
Wolfman Jack later
analyzed, “If you could scratch any show business person deep enough, you’d
probably find a scared little kid inside there pleading, ‘Hey, hey, look what I
can do. Do you love me now?’ … That’s why I like being Wolfman Jack.”
Coping
with family stress can make or break a kid.
Through the divorce,
their parents’ rapid remarriages, and a couple of half-siblings to tolerate, by
the mid-Forties Bobby and older sister, Joan, often soothed their ruffled souls
listening to the radio until bedtime.
Perhaps they
brightened to a silly song, “Mairzy Doats” (Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry
Livingston); or imagined another life with Rodgers and Hammerstein songs for new
Broadway production, “Oklahoma!”
A case of
mononucleosis around the age of eight, however, took Bobby past
idle listening. The flu-like malady treated at the time with prolonged rest,
made the bedside radio his constant companion.
That was back when
dramatic shows and comedians’ sketches ruled the airwaves. The inimitable Jack
Benny made him howl with laughter, while the “Shadow” and the “Green Hornet”
piqued his adventurous crime-fighting interest. Rock & Roll was nowhere
near the radio dial, still only a glimmer off the guitar strings of Rhythm
& Blues songsters.
But young Bob
learned to create vibrant pictures in his mind gleaned from the radio’s memorable
broadcasts. “Radio creates movies that go on in your own mind,” wrote Wolfman.
“Part of the ‘movie’ is a relationship with someone—the DJ, the announcer—that
you never meet and you never know, but they’re part of your life anyway.”
Skipping through
family angst and teenage unrest, Bob escaped a future of gang life and
attributed his good fortune largely to sister, Joan, and Francis Gregory,
“Tantan,” the family’s maid / nanny.
“She was family—more like an active, ever-present
grandmother than a servant,” he wrote. Tantan’s presence during his formative
years followed him through to adulthood (although she couldn’t abide the
merry-go-round marriages and left when he was still young enough to miss her
hugs).
Subsequent summers
with mom, school months with dad, took their toll on him. By the early 1950s
Bobby classified himself as a “juvenile delinquent” (a relatively new term at
the time for troubled teens). Luckily, his fanatical interest in radio and
XERF* began to divert his attention from the streets.
Although the
Manhattan kid listened to WINS/New York during the day, the Mexico blaster and
nighttime only station captured his impressionable nocturnal imagination.
“After Midnight”* exciting things happen
in radio and Bob recalled XERF’s Big Rockin’ Daddy’s show playing jump-band
music—Rhythm & Blues with a stripped-down sound. He likened it to the tunes
of ol’ Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm and Louis Jordan’s His Tympany Five. (Nat
King Cole album, 1957.)
So at sixteen in
1954, it was no stretch for Bob to embrace Alan Freed in his new Rock &
Roll gig at WINS/New York. Already familiar with Alan from his Moondog show out
of Cleveland, Bob told himself right then and there, “I don’t care what. I’m
gonna definitely be part of this.” He didn’t know how; but then, that’s what
dreams are made of.
Alan Freed’s first
of many shows at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater was not going to happen without
Bob Smith. Aiming for an experience beyond audience level, Bob wangled his way
to the side of the stage (imagine that—this was before decades of stalker fans brought
on celebs’ high security), and according to his memories, over the five-day
event, Bob became “Smitty” the gofer.
Fun tales are recalled,
like his task to give the two-minute on-stage warning to Jackie Wilson, then
lead singer of Billy Ward and the Dominoes. Bob walked in on Wilson and his
girlfriend hastily readjusting their clothes (wink, wink).
And young Smitty’s
eyes widened at the big wad of cash in Alan Freed’s hands as the crew waited
for payroll … yep, he was destined for radio stardom.
School days, school daze, good ol’ Golden Rule … fades.
By 1956 dad Weston
and stepmom Marge, moved to “uppity” Short Hills, New Jersey, and enrolled Bob
in a trade/tech school to become an electrician.
This was not the
kind of electricity Bob responded to; a consummate daydreamer, he nearly
electrocuted himself and another student. That’s when he finally took control
of his future.
Gee—here’s something
none of us have ever done—Bob left home every day “for school” and detoured
over to Newark’s WNJR. Making friends with the receptionist he parked himself
in the lobby listening to the broadcast until a guy who looked like he worked
there ambled through.
Bob stood up,
introduced himself, and asked if he could watch and learn—he really wanted to study
the radio business. He asked the right guy.
Although Bob
rationalized that he was not truly deceiving his parents, he was attending a trade school—of sorts.
Just not the one they were paying for.
Logging five or six
hours a day, as Smitty the Gofer again, Bob caught a big break when his
engineer friend, Jim, called in sick. Ignoring their fears of union issues,
station management let Bob run the board for Mr. Blues (the first White DJ he
once thought was Black).
Of course, the real
issue was the show began at dinnertime—when Bob was supposed to be home from
“school.” Oh yeah, he was busted.
What do you do with
a habitually truant teenager? Well, the Smiths shipped Bob off to a school for
problem kids. The security was tighter, but Bob had the radio bug and when he
faked sick again … in a way he was. He had radio fever!
That was not the
final act that split Bob from his family, however. Plain ol’ sibling rivalry
broke the straw.
Always with some
sort of radio studio setup in his room or the garage, one day Bob needed to
replace his broken turntable. Siblings should share, right? His thought
exactly. So he borrowed his stepbrother’s. Unfortunately, the
also-troubled-teen didn’t see things Bob’s way. He told mom.
Marge threw a
hissy-fit and demanded to hubby Weston that Bob exit, stage left … now. Even
then, Bob understood his father’s sadness, “caught between a child who kept
fucking up and a spouse who never gave an inch.”
With an apology,
Weston handed Bob $300 (a lot of money in the late Fifties), and told him it
was time to go out on his own.
Bob didn’t hesitate.
He grabbed his best friend, Ritchie, shot down to the used car lot and plunked
down most of his dollars on a dark green 1949 Buick convertible with a Fireball
8 under the hood.
That isn’t to say he
wasn’t hurt and more than a little confused. But the two good-looking young’uns
experienced that first naïve rush of newfound freedom that we all savored—and
feared—when marching out our parents’ door for the first time.
Top down, hair
blowing in the wind, they warbled with Chuck Berry on the radio all the way out
of New Jersey, “You can’t catch me. Baby, you can’t catch me. ‘Cause if you get
too close, you know I’m gone like a cooool breeze …”
For Robert Weston Smith, it was Hollywood or Bust!
<><><><>
Experience Wolfman Jack on
YouTube – start here,
and be-bop your way down the line!
Missed BFYP-Book 1 (1954-1959) excerpt or two? See below!
Blast
from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #5
– Ken Chase (Mike Korgan)
Blast
from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #4
– 1955 News & Notes
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #3 – Jay & the Americans (Sandy Deane)
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #2 – Dr. Don Rose
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #1 – Ron Riley
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #3 – Jay & the Americans (Sandy Deane)
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #2 – Dr. Don Rose
Blast from Your Past-Book 1 Excerpt #1 – Ron Riley
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