Shiftless2
Well-known member
Millions of teenagers thought he was Black. He played their favorite music every night from an illegal radio station. He never told them the truth.
His name was Wolfman Jack. And his story is one of the most fascinating—and complicated—chapters in American music history.
Picture this: It's 1965. You're a teenager in Kansas. Your parents are asleep. You've got a transistor radio hidden under your pillow, tuned to a station that shouldn't exist.
The voice comes through the static—deep, gravelly, dripping with soul: "AROOOOO! This is the Wolfman, baby, and we got the sounds that'll make your soul shake!"
Then the music hits. Chuck Berry. Little Richard. James Brown. Ray Charles. Music you can't hear anywhere else. Music your local radio station would never play.
You have no idea what this DJ looks like. But the voice sounds Black. The music is Black. So you assume the Wolfman must be Black.
You'd be wrong.
Wolfman Jack was born Robert Weston Smith in Brooklyn, 1938. White. Working-class. And absolutely obsessed with Black music from the moment he could turn a radio dial.
This was segregated America. Radio stations were segregated too. "White" stations played pop and country. "Black" stations played rhythm and blues and early rock and roll—what they called "race music."
Young Bob Smith loved the Black stations. The energy. The rhythm. The rawness. The way the DJs ....
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