elaich wrote:
"Brenda Ann" wrote in
:
Only one I've heard around there
was 1090 XEPRS (Back then it was the 1090 Soul Express with Wolfman
Jack)
Remember "Crusin' Oldies" with Huggy Boy? Wish I could find an aircheck of
that!
1090 is now "Double X" with Sporting News Radio.
The border powerhouse quickly reappeared in the 1940s as XERF, 1570 kHz,
and still all in English. The station was supposedly down to "only" 250
kW, omnidirectional, on one of those Mexican clear channels it had
helped create. There were, however, regular rumors that sometimes, in
the dead of night, when the electric bill was paid up, the engineers
couldn't resist cranking the thing un poquito mas, permanently fading
the paint on every south wall clear to Alberta. The "RF" stood for
"Radio Fifteen," but all the world's nerds knew what it really stood for.
For all its wattage, XERF was kind of a nowhere station. It tried the
same time-brokered format of Texas radio preachers, yee-hah bands,
chatty DJs, and quack cures, but without Brinkley to pull it off. It
lost money. The owner was forever in and out of legal trouble.
Fortunately, Ciudad Acuņa still drew larger-than-life figures to its
larger-than-life radio. The next one to happen along was Bob Smith, a
skinny white kid from a tough section of Brooklyn, who had drifted from
one southern US station to the next, learning his DJ gig the tough way.
He had one major career problem - he insisted on playing the real, urban
blues, the cynically named "race records" by the original black artists.
White boys just didn't do that in the late 50s and early 60s - they
played the vapid cover versions aimed at nice Caucasian folks. In
Virginia, it is said, the Klan burned a cross on his lawn.
That's right - this skinny white kid with the black voice who could
reach Canada without a transmitter was Wolfman Jack, the legendary radio
figure who stoked a generation on the blues, and pretty much invented
the sixties. Yes, he's the guy George Lucas put in the movie. Better
Lucas should have told the real story though. The Wolfman did not hang
out in some hayburner sucking Popsicles. The Wolfman did not play
anything as sissy as the Del-Vikings. The one thing he did do was "blast
that thing clear around the world," as the dorky actor said.
Now, the Wolfman washed up at XERF during a strike. He wound up more or
less running the place. XERF's media karma was at work. Magic was alive.
The owner had defaulted, repeatedly, on payroll and taxes, and the
Federales were getting ready to sieze the station again. Somehow,
though, Wolfman and others raised the money to keep the border blaster
on the air. They played music people wanted to hear, all the time
selling all manner of dubious products on-mike.
Wolfman lived in Del Rio and commuted over the border, his Cadillac
filled with recordings and $100 bills. With no consultants, no rating
books, no focus groups, no audience research, no tests, no wired-up
teenagers holding red and green buttons, none of that crap, he
re-invented night time radio. He plugged it into That Big Amp In The
Sky, and cranked it to eleven - or at least 110% modulation - on his
signature howls. If you were halfway hip in the sixties, you knew where
to listen. That's all.
There was one problem. Nobody was quite sure who owned the station.
Nasty letters were written, death threats were exchanged, and XERF
started fitting out a private corps of security guards. The station
stocked up on some gear not normally seen at a broadcast site, such as
automatic weapons and plenty of ammo. The once beautiful transmitter
building, already minus most of its original detailing, became even more
like a fort.
Wolfman Jack liked to tell a story about what happened next. Now,
everyone agrees that there was a real, border shootout, just like in the
movies, the DJ diving for cover, bullets flying every which way.
Wolfman, of course, always said he was there, having heard pistol shots
on the air, and broken the speed record down from Del Rio in his Caddy.
Others say he probably wasn't there, but that the gun battle definitely
happened, followed by lots of cops poking around, lots of investigations
and legal complications. No matter how you want to tell the story, it
was not the Wolfman's best year.
Wolfman moved on, as all radio gypsies must, to another border blaster
in a marsh by the Tijuana River, with a dead shot up to Los Angeles, and
yet another emisadora muy grande. This was XERB, Rosarito Beach, BC.
XERB's signal could hold its own with such L.A. giants as KFI and KNX,
and certainly had no trouble whatever shooting up the Central Valley as
depicted by George Lucas. It was perfect setup for the Wolfman. Now the
mystery man with the huge voice and the good music could own California
at night, and inspire everyone. The rest is history, and more than one
great movie.
http://www.modestoradiomuseum.org/st...of%20xerf.html