Wolfman Jack (Robert Weston Smith)

(b. 21 January 1938 in Brooklyn, New York; d. 1 July 1995 in Belvidere, North Carolina), legendary radio personality, television host, actor, and commercial spokesperson.

Smith was the younger of two children of Anson Weston Smith, Jr., an Episcopal Sunday school teacher, writer, editor, and executive vice president of the Financial World, and Rosamund Small. His parents divorced while Smith was young. His father, who suffered financial losses during the Great Depression, sold shoes for a time, then started his own public relations consulting firm and wrote for the Wall Street Transcript. Both parents remarried and shared custody of Smith and his sister.

Smith later referred to himself as a “budding juvenile delinquent,” and his father bought him a large transoceanic radio to keep him out of trouble. Smith became an avid fan of rhythm and blues (R&B) and the disc jockeys who promoted it, such as Philadelphia’s “Jocko” Henderson, New York’s “Dr. Jive,” the “Moon Dog” Alan Freed (first in Cleveland and later at New York’s WINS), and Nashville’s “John R.” Richbourg, who later became Smith’s mentor. Smith began skipping school and to hang around at WNJR-AM, an R&B station in Newark, New Jersey, where he ran errands and learned a few radio basics. After being thrown out by his father, Smith sold encyclopedias and Fuller brushes door-to-door. His sister, Joan, intervened with their father to enable Smith to attend the National Academy of Broadcasting in Washington, D.C.

Upon graduation in 1960, Smith began working at WYOU-AM in Newport News, Virginia, where he played R&B music as “Daddy Jules” and sold ads for the station as Bob Smith. In 1961 he married Lucy (“Lou”) Lamb. They had two children. When the station’s format was changed from R&B to “beautiful music,” Daddy Jules was forced to become “Roger Gordon and Music in Good Taste.” In 1962 Smith moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, to manage the country music station KCIJ-AM and also served as the morning disc jockey, “Big Smith with the Records.”

Smith had long been fascinated by the freewheeling radio stations that operated just south of the Mexican border, outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Some of these “border blasters,” for example, XERF-AM, broadcast at 250,000 watts, five times the U.S. limit. Consequently, their signals were picked up all over North America and at night even as far away as Europe and the Soviet Union. Many of these stations made high profits selling airtime to evangelical preachers from the United States who broadcast via tape and sold mail-order “cures” for people’s ills.

In December 1963, longing to create his own on-air character and have more control over the music he played, Smith traveled to XERF in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, just south of Del Rio, Texas, and walked into the middle of a labor dispute. Using both charm and money, Smith took control of the station with the backing of the workers’ union and the federales. He then increased profits by raising the preachers’ fees and put his newly created alter ego “Wolfman Jack” on the air every night.

In his trademark gravelly voice—he always refused to quit smoking unfiltered cigarettes for fear that his voice would change—the Wolfman played R&B and early rock music, howling and yipping between songs, pounding on phone books, and using suggestive banter, telling listeners to “reach out and turn my knobs” and “get naked!” XERF’s profitable empire was built on mail-order, where the jive-talking Wolfman sold Jesus figurines, posters, baby chicks, drug paraphernalia, and pills to improve sexual performance, lose weight, and even gain weight. Wolfman Jack’s show was so popular and profitable that it continued on XERF via tape until 1966 and was also carried on the similarly powerful XERB, XELO, and XEG, even though Smith left Mexico after eight months. He moved to Minneapolis in 1964 to run station KUXL. Missing the excitement, however, he returned to border radio to run XERB, opening an office on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in January 1966. His shows were taped a day in advance and sent over the border to be broadcast from the powerful transmitter in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. Smith lived the fast life of concerts, parties, and cocaine in Los Angeles, and XERB was a huge success until January 1971. At that time the Mexican government suddenly decided that its Catholic citizens should not be subjected to evangelization and banned the Pentecostal preachers, taking away 80 percent of the station’s revenue.

The Wolfman then moved to the Los Angeles station KDAY-AM, a progressive station that could only pay a fraction of his former XERB income. Capitalizing on his fame, Wolfman edited his old XERB Wolfman Jack tapes and offered them to stations everywhere, inventing rock and roll radio syndication. He also appeared on Armed Forces Radio from 1970 until 1986. Thus, Wolfman Jack eventually was broadcast on more than 2,000 radio stations in fifty-three countries.

George Lucas, who grew up listening to XERB, cast Wolfman Jack to play himself in American Graffiti (1973), the first time many people outside California saw the face behind the voice. Many were surprised that he was not African American. No longer publicity shy, he was the host of NBC-TV’s The Midnight Special from 1973 to 1981 and appeared on more than forty other network television shows. His legendary status was immortalized in numerous songs, including the Guess Who’s “Clap for the Wolfman.” Paid handsomely to join New York’s WNBC-AM in August 1973, he moved back to California after only one year and concentrated on his syndicated radio show.

On television Wolfman hosted the syndicated Wolfman Jack Show in 1978–1979 and attempted an ill-fated animated Saturday morning show, Wolfman Rock TV, in 1984. In 1988 he began hosting the Nashville Network’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Palace, which specialized in oldies groups and nostalgia acts, with whom he was closely identified in his late career, when he frequently made infomercials promoting music collections. In 1989 he settled in Belvidere, North Carolina. In 1995 he began hosting the weekly Live from Planet Hollywood radio show, broadcast from Washington, D.C., and heard on seventy-nine stations.

Overweight for many years, Wolfman Jack died of a heart attack at his home in Belvidere after returning from a publicity tour for his autobiography. He was cremated and his ashes inurned on his estate in Belvidere. He was posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1996 and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1999. Always insisting that he was in “the happiness business,” Wolfman Jack never used vulgarities on the radio, relying instead on attitude and double or even triple entendres. His enthusiastic style and fast-talking patter flourished when radio stations were driven by personalities rather than constrained by playlists.

Wolfman Jack looked back on his long career in Have Mercy! Confessions of the Original Rock ’n’ Roll Animal, written with Byron Laursen (1995). Biographical profiles are in Wes Smith, The Pied Pipers of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s (1989); Philip A. Lieberman, Radio’s Morning Show Personalities: Early Hour Broadcasters and Deejays from the 1920s to the 1990s (1996); and John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, vol. 23 (1999). The Mexican radio stations are covered thoroughly in Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio (1987). Early profiles of Wolfman Jack include Dan Ford, “Wolfman Jack, from Cub to Howling Success,” Los Angeles Times (3 Dec. 1972), and John Rockwell, “Wolfman Prowls the Ratings Front,” New York Times (20 Nov. 1973). Notable stories and tributes are in the Toronto Star (2 July 1995), Washington Post (3 July 1995), and Daily News (5 July 1995). Obituaries are in the Daily News (2 July 1995), Los Angeles Times (2 July 1995), New York Times (2 July 1995), Variety (10 July 1995), Billboard (15 July 1995), and Newsmakers (1996).

John A. Drobnicki