I bought this record, which was a cut-out, used in 1981 or so because WXRT had played Taj Mahal’s Nobody’s Business But My Own frequently enough to make me want to have it. He did a wonderful job of imitating Wolfman Jack saying Ain’t this XERB, baby. I saw this copy in Philadelphia and got.
Turns out it was the only song I was glad to hear. Kris Kristofferson and Joan Baez singing Hello In There is fine, but not better than John Prine. I like to hear Kristofferson sing Me and Bobby McGee, but here the vocals included the entire festival.
It was California in the good old days, I guess. The organizer wanted to keep the crowd and the ticket price down. Wikipedia says that one year when the festival sold all the tickets, people listened from the highway instead of crashing in. That wasn’t like the Newport Folk Festival or Woodstock. Wolfman Jack was a mysterious figure until American Graffiti came out in 1973. In Ohio in 1970 the folks who had heard of him argued about his age, size, and racial/ethnic heritage based on his raspy voice. Having a black performer (Taj Mahal) put on a black voice to imitate the Wolfman helped to maintain the mystery.
converselyspeaking 