Border Radio
Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves, Revised Edition
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.
This book adds immeasurably to our appreciation and understanding of the power the aural medium possesses to mirror and shape culture.
- Foreword by Wolfman Jack
- Introduction: Turn Your Radio On
- 1. Del Rio's Dr. Brinkley: The Big Daddy of Border Radio
- 2. Purple Shadow on the Rio Grande: Norman Baker in Nuevo Laredo
- 3. Border Blaster at Black Rock
- 4. Crazy
- 5. Please Pass the Tamales, Pappy
- 6. "Radio Waves Pay No Attention to Lines on a Map"
- 7. "Coast to Coast, Border to Border . . . Your Good Neighbor along the Way"
- 8. Howlin' on a Quarter Million Watts
- 9. Blasting from Baja
- 10. Radio Station S-A-V-E-D
- 11. That Outlaw X
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- "Border Radio" song lyrics from Nevada Slim
- About the Authors
