Music: Radio

Border radio is back from the edge

The boob tube might be filled with late-night litanies from a parade of preachers, healers and how-to experts promising to fix everything from your eyes to your thighs to your soul. Yet they ain't got nuthin' on the cast of characters who populated the outlaw airwaves beamed across America from Mexico during the 1930s through the '60s, the heyday of border radio.

Those high-powered "master blaster" stations, owned by clever entrepreneurs of dubious distinction, were located just outside the United States' jurisdiction, where they could safely fill American ears with all manner of outlandish blather and cool tunes not heard on most hometown stations.

Austinites Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford captured the mood in their book "Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves," and now the Austin-based nonprofit organization Texas Folklife Resources is bringing those characters back to life — at least for a night.

Crawford and Fowler have been tapped to host "Border Radio: The Big Jukebox in the Sky" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Paramount Theatre. The show, to be taped for distribution by Texas Public Radio flagship station KSTX of San Antonio, features Rick Trevino, Miss Lavelle White, Patricia Vonne, Joe "King" Carrasco and Maryann Price, with an appearance by border radio vet Dallas "Nevada Slim" Turner, who started out as a yodeling cowboy and wound up on the Psychic Friends Network.

"Gene and I just fell in love with the stories of these characters and the romance of these super-powered outlaw stations," Crawford explains about their 18-year-old book, inspired by a Texas Monthly article by the late Bill Brammer. While updating the book, they were invited by Casey Monahan, director of the Texas Music Office, and writer Joe Nick Patoski, to develop a presentation for the 2001 Buddy Holly conference in Lubbock. Monahan and Patoski told them they ought to develop a stage show around the material. When the new edition came out in 2003, they made presentations at various locations.

Nancy Bless' husband saw the show, thought it was hysterical, and told her to read the book, which she was doing when she was hired by Texas Folklife Resources as its executive director.

Thinking about a project built around the concept, she contacted Sidney Brammer, a former New York producer who had returned to Austin and worked with Ray Benson on the production "Ride With Bob," about Western swing singer Bob Wills. Bless asked Brammer if she'd like to help produce a radio show, and Brammer revealed her father was the guy who wrote the magazine story.

"It seemed like we were all meant to find each other," Bless says. She wanted to call it "The Border Radio of the Mind" or "The Rio Grande of the Mind."

"It isn't just about the border and just about Texas," she says. "It's about la frontera, about the edges of things. But it's very specific to us, to who we all are. And I thought of this as a wonderful kind of vehicle for us to do these folk master shows."

She also calls it "nuevo vaudeville," which appeals to Crawford. He says he and Fowler have dreamed for years of recording a live radio show in the border radio spirit.

Though the Federal Communications Commission eventually corralled border radio in the '80s, stations such as XERB and XERF had already influenced generations of listeners who found it easy to tune in at night, when those powerful signals bounced even up to New England. Border radio pioneer Dr. J.R. Brinkley, Wolfman Jack and other famed voices pitched everything from Brinkley's impotency-curing goat gland transplants to autographed pictures of Jesus, and they played that daring early rock 'n' roll music groove-lovin' teens longed to hear.

Some of those tunes were recently recorded by luminaries such as Lyle Lovett, Delbert McClinton, Ruben Ramos and Trevino on the Los Super 7 disc "Heard it on the X." Fowler and Crawford, a KUT veteran, wrote the album's liner notes, and Crawford says the album's success was an impetus for the new show. There's even talk about doing a Los Super 7 border radio tour that would contain elements of this production.

"This border radio stuff has just come back roaring into fashion," Crawford says. "People are more interested in the story now than when we first came out with the book 20 years ago. ... I also think that cable and the various media outlets have gotten so wacko that folks can understand more about the border radio characters and really appreciate them."

For tickets and information, visit www.texasfolklife.org, or call (866) 443-8849.

You can reach radio column writer Lynne Margolis at popscribe@aol.com.