In March 1968, Peter Wolf followed Joe Rogers onto the airwaves to become the second deejay at WBCN. Born in New York City, he came to Boston in 1964 to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts but refocused his attention on music, specifically the blues, a couple years later and settled in Cambridge.
Soon the singing novice and harmonica trainee became a club regular, meeting and jamming with A-list favorites like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and James Cotton. When Wolf appeared at The Boston Tea Party in late 1967 fronting The Hallucinations, the club’s owner, Ray Riepen, saw not only a talented lead singer, but a man who he believed would be mesmerizing on the radio. “Peter had a beautiful understanding of what to do with the radio,” Rogers once said. “He understood something about show business and how to grab people‘s attention, then what to do with them once you had them.”
ARRIVING PREPARED, “WOOFA GOOFA,” J. GEILS BAND, DEPARTURE
Wolf didn’t just arrive at the station for his overnight show with a box of records to play; he came with a plan. He’d already chosen a theme song (Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers’ “Mosaic”), plus an entourage that included occasional co-host Charles Daniels, nicknamed “The Master Blaster,” who called Wolf “Woofa Goofa,” which Wolf adopted as his on-air handle. “I brought all my records and 45s into the studio,” Wolf said. “Lots of blues, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll.” In his husky growl, he’d grant blessings on the “stacks of wax,” “mounds of sound” and the “platters that matter.”
by the fall of 1968, about six months after joining ‘BCN’s “American Revolution,” Wolf had joined a new group of musicians, The J. Geils Blues Band. Soon his growing commitment to that group edged into his all-night radio turf. “By early December,” Sam Kopper related, “we had to give Peter the option: you can either do overnights or you can become a rock star.” Wolf went with the band, and the rest, of course, is history.
(by Carter Alan)
Carter Alan is a former WBCN deejay now heard on WZLX-FM in Boston. He is the author of Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN (University Press of New England, 2013).
