Gary Reeder
XERF is still one of the most powerful radio stations in
Monday, August 09, 2021, 11:30

North America. Wolfman Jack worked there for many years. Growing up in Tennessee the only rock & roll station I could get was a blues station WLAC AM in Nashville that played hard core blues (I ended up many years later in 1980 working for WLAC FM). At night WLAC AM was sketchy at best even though they were a 50,000 watt AM station. The main nighttime station I listened to was XERF in Del Rio and Wolfman Jack due to them being extremely powerful. He growled and howled and was often a bit raunchy but the actual station towers and transmitter were in Mexico so the Feds couldn't do much about him, although the studio was in Texas. If I remember right XERF was 100,000 watts and could be heard pretty much all over the country. 100,000 watts on an AM station pretty much wiped out any other AM station near their frequency. I listened to him at night in Tennessee and when I got into radio my first job was in McCook Nebraska and all the kids I hung out with listened to Wolfman Jack in Nebraska. Later I moved to another station in Paducah Kentucky and Wolfman was there too.

Wolfman Jack made blues famous for white kids and I guess the 3 guys in ZZ Top were listeners too.