Memories of XERB

It was BIG news in San Diego when it was learned that Wolfman would be coming to San Diego from XERF. Cheesey bumper stickers with a cartoonish
wolf's head were found in record stores. "Fat Daddy Washington" (ex-KGFJ) started the afternoon shift, followed by Wolfman. Lots of screamin' -"Are your
little peaches sweet?", "what's shakin' " , and "how's your bugaloo hangin?'" were his questions to the callers. And , engineer Mario with his "little
brown bottle" .
There were still preachers on the air at various times-"put your hand on the radio, and be healed" and "miracle prayer cloths" were available for a donation...
Crusing the Sunset Strip in 1970, I heard Edwin Starr's "War" on 1090 with treble sidebands so strong, it was interfering with KNX and KRLA...
VERY loud audio; but not the quite the quality of KRLA or KDAY.

"Patch", as I recall, had his show on XEMO until midnight, when Curtis Springer's show came on. Promoting his "health" products- Manna, and Herbal Teas,
Mineral Water pool etc., he would invite you to come to Zzyzx, located "On 12 thousand acres, which belongs to God". God, in this case, turned out to be
the U.S. gov't. Mixed in were gospel songs by George Beverly Shea and others. Announcer Jim Gates did all the I'D's, on "The Great Christian Beacon of The
Pacific Coast" and "studios in the U.S. Grant Hotel". In '61 or so their station burned down, and was off the air for maybe a year and a half.

Re: Memories of XERB Format before 1966

t.j. said:

Hey Guys:

I have been reading all of the post here. Very enjoyable reading.

Would anybody know the format history of XERB from 1957 to 1966? I do know that XERB went R&B Aug 1, 1966. (Got that from Wolfman Jack's Web Site and articles I researched on line)

Was XERB Country in the mid 50's?

Thanks

T.J.

Click to expand...

T.J.: As of the August 13, 1966 Billboard, XERB going R&B was still in the rumor stage. But...the August 27 issue shows pictures of an R&B DJ gathering August 11-14 in New York and John Phillips of XERB is shown there. So Wolf might have the August 1 date right (I leave some room for doubt because his autobiography is full of timeline discrepancies).

It appears XERB was mostly country from the early 50s onward. The exception was 1962, where they tried a Top 40 format. Not sure when in '62 they launched or how long it lasted, but the January 12, 1963 issue of Billboard reports that XERB was dropping Top 40 to go all-country. From Big 121's post above, they may have returned from the fire with a Top 40 format.

Big 121 said:

There were still preachers on the air at various times-"put your hand on the radio, and be healed" and "miracle prayer cloths" were available for a donation...

Click to expand...

As told to me by Sergio Ballesteros, the manager of XERF in the 60's, the preacher who did the "put your hands on the radio.." thing added "and feel the power of the Lord." As he said it, he ran a cart with an automation 25Hz cue tone which made most any radio vibrate like mad, although the audio was barely perceptable to the over-40 crowd that seemed to listen to that sort of preaching.

Sergio once asked a preacher, who offered $5, $10 and $20 dollar blessings by mail, what the difference was between the $5 blessing and the $20 one... and was told, that the difference was fifteen dollars "more for me..."

RadeoEngineer said:

Gotta say I find that one hard to believe, but I do like the story.

Click to expand...

I've had the experince of an automation tone filter crapping out, causing the 25 Hz tone to be broadcast at about -10, which was enough to make the metal dashboard of my 70's car vibrate like mad while I was hurrying to get to the station...

The main issue in Villa Acuña is that the 25 Hz tone would sometimes kick the big RCA off the air. The placing of a tone at that frequency on an early 60's cart machine probably ended up with a very messy waveform.

Is it possible the 25 Hz tone could have been a C-Quam stereo exciter pilot tone?

tfcwings said:

Is it possible the 25 Hz tone could have been a C-Quam stereo exciter pilot tone?

Click to expand...

When syndicated tape based automated formats prevailed, from the late 60's well into the 80's, the "end of Cut" cue was a 25Hz tone of a specific duration. This caused the system to sequence the next scheduled event.

The tone detector "heard" the tone and sent some form of logic or control to the system and also had a relatively sharp filter at 25Hz to remove the tone from the audio before broadcast. The tone also made reel-to-reel decks stop after a precise "cue to next cut" roll.

Syndicators used very precise 25 Hz tone generators that bridged the audio in tape mastering which put down the precise length of tone at the proper place and the right level with a single button push.

First time I've read this thread, so I'm late to the party with several observations.
XERB's change to R&B:
I was traveling from Bakersfield to Malibu around July 10-12 1966 early in the afternoon when I noticed XERB, jockless, playing R&B instead of country, promoting the new "mighty 1090" coming soon. (Wolfman Jack was not on the promos, but I don't recall who was. Wolfman had had a taped show from mid-3 starting in early '66.)
I was completely away from radio for two weeks, but I don't recall the state of XERB in late July. They may have still been running the same music and promos, but nothing stands out.)
I was on vacation in early August and only heard XERB at night. Wolfman Jack was on at 9:15, I think, following Leo Herbert's racing report for Turfcraft.
Wolfman was promoting a specific date (don't remember the date!) when his show would run from 9 o'clock till "3 in the munin', baby!)
When I returned westward around August 12-13, XERB was fully established with jocks "The Nazz" and Fat Daddy Washington days and Wolfman Jack at 9 PM or 9:15.
Four months later the Wolfman was promoting a new lineup for the new year, including "The Boss" Ray Moss from 4 to 7 AM (which I believe never happened; 3 to 6 or 7 AM was Spanish); Larry Dale from 7 to 10, and possibly Buddy Lowe (sp?) later in the day.
There's a promo on an Ace CD of Johnny Otis saying his new program would be on Monday through Saturday starting January 16, and that would be Monday in 1967.
(Sometime in '68 Magnificent Montagu held down the 2 to 6 PM slot.)
The only thing constant on XERB was change.
Often they'd promote the new XERB coming soon, sometimes with soul and other times playing the Mamas and Papas and other pop artists, while continuing to publish a Top 25 soul chart. Most jocks didn't stay long.
Often Wolfman Jack played soul at night, then for months he'd veer more toward progressive rock in the later hours.
In late 1970 on a Saturday night the whole "Jesus Christ Superstar" album was previewed by the Wolfman. Think I have a tape of that somewhere.
Patch:
Patch The Roving DJ was on Saturday afternoon, as noted previously in the thread.
However, for a brief time around October 1969, XEMO extended their hours on Saturday nights, and Patch was on all night.
I don't think this lasted more than a month or so. I recorded some of it at the time, but the tape went missing soon afterward, so I only have my memory to go on.
I also remember XEAU playing top 40 around September 1961, but I have no recall of the jocks. I'm glad others do; interesting to read. If a time machine was ever invented, I'd volunteer just so I could hear this stuff again!
XEGM wasn't top 40, but as with many Tijuana stations, Chuck Johnson paid for the time to play soul at night (later true for 1270, 1550 and, in 1974, 1470. Re 1470, he claimed they'd go all soul with the call letters XEBBC for Black Broadcasting Company, and the call letters were changed, but the fulltime format never happened.)
On XEGM, Chuck Johnson began around December 1965, from a record shop at 4467 Logan in San Diego. He was there till around 1968.
That station had the tinniest audio I've ever heard on the radio.
For maybe three months in '67 or '68, a tone was mixed with XEGM's audio. I thought a 950 was off frequency, but in the daytime from L.A., the tone was audible and never varied.
XEGM also may be the most overmodulated station I ever heard around 1976 or '77, when I believe they were programmed by the same folks who did L.A.'s KLVE.
Odd thing about XEAK. I heard them, but have very little memory of them.
That leads me to believe that the jocks may have just played the hits, lacking the excitement of KRLA or KCBQ.
I listened, but have stronger recollections of the music and the evening religious block than I do of the DJ's. My guess is that the formatics may have been similar to "The Mighty 690" of 1980.
But it's only a guess.

michael hagerty said:

T.J.: As of the August 13, 1966 Billboard, XERB going R&B was still in the rumor stage. But...the August 27 issue shows pictures of an R&B DJ gathering August 11-14 in New York and John Phillips of XERB is shown there. So Wolf might have the August 1 date right (I leave some room for doubt because his autobiography is full of timeline discrepancies).

It appears XERB was mostly country from the early 50s onward. The exception was 1962, where they tried a Top 40 format. Not sure when in '62 they launched or how long it lasted, but the January 12, 1963 issue of Billboard reports that XERB was dropping Top 40 to go all-country. From Big 121's post above, they may have returned from the fire with a Top 40 format.

Click to expand...

Michael:

Through my extensive research here is an early timeline of 1090 XERB:

January 1, 1947-XERB Spanish General Entertainment, English Religious, Country

February 6, 1956-XERB Country, Religious (Mon-Sat 5am-8am, Sun)

September 1, 1958-XERB Top 40

March 2, 1959-XERB Top 40, Country (Mon-Sun 2PM-10PM)

January 7, 1963-XERB Country

September 7, 1963-XERB Country (Mon-Sun 10AM-6:30PM, 12:30-6AM)
Religious (Mon-Sun 6AM-10AM, 6:30PM-12:30PM)


T.J.

DavidEduardo said:

Syndicators used very precise 25 Hz tone generators that bridged the audio in tape mastering which put down the precise length of tone at the proper place and the right level with a single button push.

Click to expand...

Yep. We'd make sure it was at least one second or under two or three seconds (can't remember which) and you could hear it in the studio monitor speakers, although normally it wasn't audible at the station, because of the filters.

Those were the days...

I did hear 25 Hz tones over the air once or twice after knowing what they were.

RE: XERB: I recall when they turned from XERB into "XPRS", the "Soul Express", and had the Master Blaster on before Wolfman, and then Art Laboe's Oldies but Goodies Show overnights. XERB/XEPRS wasn't all that audible in my metro at the time, so I didn't hear them very often, and at the time, I didn't have a radio that was good enough to pull them from behind the local station on the same channel.

DavidEduardo said:

One of the preachers on XERF back in the 60's discovered the power of 25 Hz tones. He would intone, "put your hands on the radio and feel the power of the Lord" and then run the tone. People would feel their radio vibrate, and send donations, thus insuring their salvation.

Click to expand...

THAT is funny!!