Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves

by Gene Fowler, Bill Crawford

Before the Internet brought the world together, there was border radio. These mega-watt "border blaster" stations, set up just across the Mexican border to evade U.S. regulations, beamed programming across the United States and as far away as South America, Japan, and Western Europe. This book traces the eventful history of border radio from its founding in the 1930s by "goat-gland doctor" J. R. Brinkley to the glory days of Wolfman Jack in the 1960s. Along the way, it shows how border broadcasters pioneered direct sales advertising, helped prove the power of electronic media as a political tool, aided in spreading the popularity of country music, rhythm and blues, and rock, and laid the foundations for today's electronic church. The authors have revised the text to include even more first-hand information and a larger selection of photographs.

Genres: History, Music, Nonfiction

371 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is maddening. The subject alone should have made it very interesting. Extra high powered radio stations popped up across the Mexican border with Texas in the 1930s looking to avoid USA regulations and serve an unholy mix of quacks (goat gland doctors), practitioners who would make any claim for their products and treatments, sometimes for desperate cancer patients, spiritualists, mind readers and others who would promise anything if you would just send your money their way. Interspersed with all the claptrap was popular pop, country, blues, Mexican and whatever other music ordinary folk wanted to hear.

All of this is informative but is done in such an embarrassingly alliterative almost ranting style. It is way too easy to make fun of the credulous people of the past. The book could have been improved with more information about how the stations could skip AM radio waves off the ozone atmosphere and be clearly heard at night and in the right conditions in places as remote as Uppsala, Sweden.

Though interesting, there is a large middle section of the book devoted to middle Texas radio that furthered careers in the 40s of such musicians as Bob Wills and the Playboys while simultaneously selling flour and political careers. That strays from the book’s subject.

I would have liked to have seen more about the early country careers in border radio of people such as the Carter family and Hank Thompson. There was not nearly enough about Wolfman Jack in the 60s, who many people alive today remember listening to on XERF.

Positives—many good pictures and an interesting bibliography.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have always been interested in outlaw radio. The border blaster stations in Mexico are highlighted in Gene Fowler's "Border Radio." While the book covers a wealth of information about the rise and fall of the "X" stations, the writing is a bit tedious and redundant. Even the colorful characters who sold everything from medical procedures to religious accessories don't really take shape. Only Wolfman Jack leaps off the page, possibly because his own words are used to tell his story.

I borrowed "Border Radio" from the public library and was pleasantly surprised to find a flexi-disc in the back cover with soundbites from the radio shows described in the book. Despite numerous check-outs since 1987, the disc was in good shape and played well on my turntable. I converted it to MP3, so now snippets of border radio will come up in my random shuffle. That brings the book up to three stars instead of two.

[Chrissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scams can be entertaining. Mass media can encourage extravangant claims and wild competition that in turn begets new regulations and yet more competition for the attention and dollars of the "common man." Stories about these scams and the persons behind them can be entertaining as well, as proved by "Border Radio."

"Border Radio" allowed some of the interesting characters from a broadcast period of roughly the 1930's through 1970's to tell some the tall tales about running or working for a border radio station (one located just to the south of the Rio Grande in Mexico or in Baja California on the west coast); however, it occasionally faltered by repeating these tales over and over in various sections.

Since the book didn't provide a timeline and covered the same stations and characters in several sections, it sometimes felt like one was going backward in the narrative and some of the descriptions became a bit tiresome with repetition (the book itself isn't that long), like listening to an elder family member tell a familiar tale from a different perspective. I would have preferred a timeline for each station indicating the dates of broadcasting, but the story isn't difficult to follow. I also noticed that I became more involved in the story as it moved closer to a time period that I could remember.

On the whole, however, the book kept my interest and gave me a better understanding for some of the shows and ads that I've seen on TV and the internet. I seriously doubt spam will ever be as interesting as goat gland operations, though.

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Face it - sometimes technology peaks. Computers, iPods, digital radio - who needs it? What you need in a technology is something that actually sounds better after midnight.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airways by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford (University of Texas Press 2002) (384.54) (3945).

The term “border radio” refers to powerful mega-watt radio stations that began broadcasting in the first half of the twentieth century from across the Rio Grande in Mexico to skirt the regulatory jurisdiction of the new FCC in the US. The FCC assigned power and bandwidth to US radio stations, but the FCC lacked any control over the Mexican border radio stations. As a result, the border radio stations blasted their programming all over the US and as far away as Europe and New Zealand.

These stations were controlled by charlatans, hucksters, and snake-oil salesmen. In fact, the book’s opening section is devoted to reporting on medical quacks who advertised “goat gland transplants” for humans. A second section is devoted to musical “bad boys of broadcasting” such as the famous disc jockey Robert W. “Wolfman Jack” Smith who howled like a banshee and blasted rock and roll over the airwaves all night long. (“Wolfman Jack” featured prominently in the film American Graffiti.)

Religious programming was a third type of radio programming that was hugely popular and influential on border radio broadcasts. Radio preachers figured prominently on these stations. The book includes a section on my own personal favorite radio preacher of all time, who I used to occasionally run across on the late-night radio airwaves in the early 1970s. This was the Reverend Frederick Eikerenkoetter II, who was known to one and all as “Reverend Ike.” He preached hardcore prosperity gospel. Border Radio refers to Reverend Ike as “The Guru of Immediate Gratification.” (p. 310).

Reverend Ike got his start on border radio station XERF from Ciudad Acuna. What’s not to like about Reverend Ike? His tag line was “You can’t lose with the stuff I use,” and listeners ate this up.

Reverend Ike preached that “the lack of money is the root of all evil.” He told his radio listeners that there was no need to worry if they were poor, for the listener could pray for anything they wanted and would be showered with God’s blessings - including whatever the supplicant had prayed to receive.

But the key to receiving God’s blessings was this: the listener first had to send a donation to Reverend Ike. Incredibly, the good reverend offered this instruction to his followers: “If necessary, borrow some money to give.” (Border Radio, p. 312.) Ike told his people that they should “Get out of the ghet-to and get into the get mo’.” Send in a donation to Reverend Ike, and you would receive an anointed “prayer cloth” which would help ensure that God would provide the donor-supplicant with whatever they specifically prayed for.

At least some of these prayer cloths must have worked, for Ike’s popularity exploded. By the early seventies, Reverend Ike’s weekly radio shows had gone mainstream. After a start on outlaw border radio stations, Reverend Ike was now being broadcast on over 1500 US radio stations. According to the authors, after Reverend Ike began using a Boston mailing address for donations, Ike became the biggest post office customer in New England. (Border Radio, p. 311).

This was a deep dive into an obscure corner of the entertainment and communications arena. The chapter about Reverend Ike made the read worthwhile.

I purchased a new PB volume on 2/9/24 from Amazon for $14.74. I wonder if I should have spent it on a prayer cloth instead.

My rating: 7/10, finished 5/1/24 (3945).

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[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot or Premise
Subtitled "Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves", this book recounts the history of Americans setting up rogue radio stations across the Mexican border and blasting their shows all over the world.

What I Liked
I first heard about rogue radio stations from ZZ Top. They released an album way back in '75 that included the song, "Heard it on the X", and it's referring to one of these stations. It was an "outlaw" station, which has that immediate appeal to it…subverting the rules, blasting rock 'n' roll, etc. And so the legend is quite attractive.

But the reality is way more magnificent than the legend. The book gives a great account of attempts by various people to establish radio stations and build a business empire with it. Some of it was pure snake oil sales, cancer cures, etc. Others were the start for mainstreaming hillbilly music, R&B, country and western, and later rock 'n' roll too. Individually, any of the chapters are fascinating. International conferences to try and deal with it, duels, armed gangs taking over stations, politicians running for election, bigger and bigger transmitters, FCC investigations, it has it all.

I particularly enjoyed the sections dealing with early rock 'n' roll, and Wolfman Jack.

What I Didn't Like
The organization of the book is terrible. It appears that many of the chapters were originally released individually for journals and newspapers. As such, they cover a particular person's story arc, their rise to fame and their regular drop to ignominy. However, for the next chapter, they frequently have to repeat some of the information from a previous chapter. Almost every chapter covers 1920 to 1950, and thus, many of these people were broadcasting at the same time, tripping over each other with the same issues, mostly competing but sometimes collaborating. After the first chapter, I wanted to rip the book apart and put it back together completely chronologically. Too often, I was reading a segment and thinking, "Oh, wow, that was the same experience as person X a few chapters back". Then I would flip back and go, "Oh, no, it isn't; it's the SAME story, same person, slightly different name and intro". So I didn't recognize them. Then later, I'd see the same story, assume it was a repeat, only to realize no, this time it was actually someone new. If it was told in chronological order, I probably would have given it a 4 or 5 stars. In its present form, it gets 3 for content, and about a 1 or 2 for frustration. And I wanted WAY more about the rock 'n' roll era in the 60s and 70s.

The Bottom Line
Come for the music, stay for the snake oil shenanigans

[Andrei Alupului · Rating 3 out of 5]

great stories and a nice excuse to listen to some old timey stuff while i read it on my commute. feels like a collection of articles that had previously been published independently, because there's overlap in information and not a consistent timeline throughout. i'd say that dilutes its utility as a historical text, just cause it's harder to piece everything together as a series of events, but considering each chapter is focused on an individual personality or, at times as in the case of the chapter on radio preachers, a theme, it's understandable. still the romanticism and strangeness is all there, and the chapter on pappy o'daniel is only more interesting to read in parallel with our current huckster president's rise. in some ways, i found that chapter weirdly comforting. if the subject compels you, it's worth your time for sure; personally i'm a sucker for this kind of shit.

[Andrew Kline]

I was looking for more of a straight forward informative history of mega powered radio transmitters for Mexico. This was more of a history as told through biographical essays. The first subject wore me out from finishing the rest (aside from the short Wolfman Jack entry). Interesting, well researched, just not what I was looking for.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brisk, entertaining read that gives the quacks in question perhaps more credit than they deserve, but the authors' generosity keeps the mood upbeat. The authors make an effort to balance a US-centric view of events by quoting Mexican government and media sources. Sometimes the text felt repetitive, as when the authors couldn't resist re-using exceptionally good quotes from the hucksters. Good (b&w) photos, extensive bibliography.

[Jennifer]

Well, I never finished reading it. I heard an interview with the author on NPR, and the book sounded really interesting. It was only sort of interesting. I'll get back to it one day.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The War for our perception has been raging for generations. This is just another battle. Look back & see the telegraph, look around now & see the internets.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy and interesting read on some of my childhood memories!

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Includes 5 3/4" record.

[Rick]

Lots of fun to read. Very interesting