I first heard The
Wolfman in the early 60s, in the middle of the night on mighty border blaster
XERF. By divine providence or dumb luck, I had the good fortune in 1969
to have bought the very first radio-cassette combo made by Norelco (the
inventor of the cassette) just before my company sent me to Anaheim, California
as a greenhorn engineer, on business. When I found Wolf bombing in every
day on 1090 XERB, I could hardly believe my ears! He was still largely
unknown outside of LA at that point, so he took me by complete surprise.
Here was this guy snarling and cackling and making irreverent and vaguely
suggestive remarks while goofing on listeners on the phone, in an era when
most announcers still cupped their hand behind the ear with great seriousness,
and humor was pretty much limited to impressions of Tonto! I have to admit,
the most exciting thing about California was jumping into the car after
work to hear this guy! Fortunately, I rolled a bit of cassette tape, and
caught these airchecks, telescoped at the time so as to save money on cassettes,
which were not cheap! I also had the clear sense that I was ear-witnessing
history in the making! When I brought these airchecks back home to CT,
I played them for everyone who would listen! The free and sometimes"stoned"
persona he adopted when making tapes to be ferried across the border to
a 50 kw transmitter (or so we were told) down in Baja California where
the FCC had no recourse, was his most inspired period, in my opinion. And
"inspire" he did - myself and many others! A few years later, Don Imus
and others would borrow much from the Wolfman, but he was The Originator;
often imitated, but never matched or duplicated! These airchecks are quite
frankly some of the best of Wolfman I've ever heard.
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