Word: wolfman
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...Wolfman's sound is coming from new directions. This month he moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he is doing a live program five hours a night five times a week and recording a sixth show. His new station, WNBC, reaches 37 states at night. Meanwhile he is continuing a syndicated package heard on 1,453 stations. For a change of pace, he flies back to L.A. to appear on NBC-TV'S weekly rock series Midnight Special. In the new movie American Graffiti he plays himself -rather well, in fact. WNBC imported him to compete...
...Pictures. The question is not quite as disingenuous as it sounds. Wolfman has had a number of guises in his 17-year career, and now, at 35, he is a far howl from his earlier images. Many listeners once believed that he was black or Mexican. "Nobody knew if I was white or black or whatever, and I kept the mystique up," he has said. "No pictures, no interviews. I turned down some heavy cats." When he did make public appearances, he painted his face assorted colors and wore a huge wig and sunglasses. "And these crazy long fingernails...
Partly it was the fact that Wolfman Jack, the zany soul brother, happened to be Robert Smith, a white man who was working on his first fortune by pitching mail-order records, burial insurance, chickens and whatever else could be sold...
...spring from some desert in old Mexico. Wolfman recalls being shunted from relative to relative as a child: "You see, I was left out in the breeze, born in Brooklyn amongst the garbage cans and roaches and poor Italians and poor blacks. We all emulated the black culture. There wasn't any other." He became a radio freak hooked on black deejays like Dr. Jive, and dropped out of high school...
Smith settled at XERF, just south of Ciudad Acuna, where he served as the businesslike station manager during the day and developed the Wolfman routine as the nighttime star. Control of the station was being contested by a rival faction, which at one point tried to take over by using hired gunmen. Wolfman says that he and his own pistoleros recaptured the station in a shootout that killed one of the bad guys. Later he ran a second station in Rosarito Beach, near Tijuana...