Sunday, March 24, 2013

Clap for the Wolfman

After I wrote the piece on Ernie Anderson, I recalled another episode of naivety on my part back in the '70's.  It involved one of my heroes, Wolfman Jack.

As a teen in high school I used to turn on my transistor late at night to listen to The Wolfman.  At the time he was broadcasting on a 50,000 watt station out of Tijuana, Mexico, XERB.  The station was so powerful The Wolfman could be heard almost anywhere West of the Rockies.  If you recall the movie American Graffiti, the kids were all listening to The Wolfman.  Of course, in the movie they made The Wolfman a local.  But I bet George Lucas, who wrote the film, recalled his teen days listen to The Wolfman howling on his AM radio as I did.

Jump ahead about 5 years or so later and I was a Disc Jockey at WTBO, in Cumberland, Maryland.  The station played all the latest rock hits and I was in the "air chair" every night entertaining.  WTBO was an affiliate of NBC Radio, carrying their five minute national broadcast at the top of the hour.

During that time frame, The Wolfman made major industry headlines by getting hired to do the evening rock show on New York's WNBC.  It was the station's latest effort to dethrone Cousin Brucie, the jock that owned the night-time in the Big Apple.

So, Mr. Naive (me), thought of myself and The Wolfman as both being NBC employees, so to speak.  And, with our station getting ready to kick off a big local contest, who better to "voice" one of our contest promos than the one and only Wolfman Jack.  So, I picked up the station phone one night and called WNBC and asked for The Wolfman.

Wolfman Jack
I really had no idea what to expect.  I talked to one person, told them I wanted The Wolfman to record some copy over the telephone for my station in Western Maryland.  He hemmed and hawed, but eventually passed me onto another guy.  I explained again.  Got the same type of response from this guy.  He put me on hold.  The next voice I heard was my hero, Wolfman Jack!

He asked me what I wanted and I just told him, like we were Disc Jockey fraternity brothers or something.  He listen to my spiel and then said he was a little busy, so if what I wanted him to say was short enough, he would do it.   I scribbled a 10-second or so piece of copy and read it to him.  He said OK (actually "OK, baby") and read it.  I had been recording the conversation and got it all.  But then he told me he didn't like the way he read it and did it again.  Then again.  Four takes in all.  I told him thanks, but I ended up thanking the dial tone as he had already hung up.

I was on cloud nine.  I got to talk to my childhood hero!  And he recorded liners we could air on our station, too.

Well, my fellow WTBO DJs were mighty impressed.  And I was in 7th heaven for weeks.  The problem was the recordings he made for me were on a regular telephone line, so the quality was pretty bad.  We didn't care, we ran them anyway.  Only thing was, our listeners didn't think it really was The Wolfman.  Because of the poor quality they thought we hired someone to do an impression. But I didn't care...it was truly The Wolfman.

Another example of a "big name" not being so big headed to talk to a young fan.  Much older now, I look back fondly at times like these and hope, someday, I'll be able to help some young person along with their dreams.

Sadly Wolfman Jack left us in 1995.

http://www.wolfmanjack.org/


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