One of two historic markers at the Del Rio home of notorious quack Dr. John R. Brinkley, who sold millions of dollars worth of dangerous impotence treatments through his border blaster radio stationS XER and XERA in the 1930s.
For more on the history of the "border blasters" of the 1930s, from the Handbook of Texas Online: (
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"BORDER RADIO. The term "border radio" refers to the American broadcasting industry that sprang up on Mexico's northern border in the early 1930s and flourished for half a century. High-powered radio transmitters on Mexican soil, beyond the reach of U.S. regulators, blanketed North America with unique programming.
Mexico accommodated these "outlaw" media operators, some of whom had been denied broadcasting licenses in the United States, because Canada and the United States had divided the long-range radio frequencies between themselves, allotting none to Mexico. Though the "borderblaster" transmitters were always in Mexico, studios (especially in the early 1930s) were sometimes in the United States, and the stations were often identified by the American town across the border. For instance, in his classic poem, "Clem Maverick, the Life and Death of a Country Singer," R. G. Vliet has Clem reminisce: "We was on the radio at Del Rio." Early on, hillbilly music proved to be one of the most effective mediums for pulling mail and moving merchandise; in turn, the border stations played a significant role in popularizing country music during the genre's crucial growth years before and after World War II.
The stations also familiarized American listeners with Mexican and Mexican-American artists. Lydia Mendoza's future husband first heard the "Lark of the Border" from Piedras Negras station XEPN in 1937. "The highlight of the [XER] program, for me," recalled a South Dakota listener in 1995, "was the beautiful voice of the 'Mexican Nightingale' [Rosa Domínguez], especially when she would sing 'Estrellita'—this farm boy thought that must be how the angels would sound in heaven."
The first border station, XED, began broadcasting from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in 1930. Owned for a time by Houston theater owner and philanthropist Will Horwitz, XED hosted occasional performances by Horwitz's friend Jimmie Rodgers. Horwitz, who dressed up as Santa Claus each year and distributed Christmas presents to Houston's underprivileged children, was sent to prison by the U.S. government for broadcasting the Tamaulipas state lottery over XED.
Dr. John R. Brinkley, originator of the "goat gland transplant" as a sexual rejuvenation treatment, opened XER (later called XERA) in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, in 1931. Brinkley later bought XED, changing the name to XEAW. In 1939 he sold XEAW to Carr Collins, Dallas insurance magnate and owner of Crazy Crystals, a laxative product derived from the fabled Crazy Water in Mineral Wells. According to Collins's son Jim, Texas governor and later U.S. senator) W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was part-owner of the station. The Mexican government confiscated XERA in 1941 and tried to confiscate XEAW shortly thereafter, but Collins moved his equipment north of the border.
Engineer Bill Branch and businessman C. M. Bres operated XEPN in Piedras Negras in the 1930s. Iowan Norman Baker, whose experimental cancer treatments made him a controversial figure, broadcast from his station XENT in Nuevo Laredo. Texas governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson once dispatched Texas Rangers to Laredo to arrest Baker on a charge of practicing medicine without a license, but the defiant broadcaster could not be lured across the Rio Grande.
Border station power generally ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 watts. Sometimes listeners claimed to hear broadcasts without a radio, receiving the powerful signal on dental work, bedsprings, and barbed wire. American network programs were often lost in the ether when a Mexican border station was broadcasting near an American station's frequency.
Hank Thompson, who grew up in Waco in the 1930s, said the American-Mexican stations on the Rio Grande "were about the only ones where you could hear country and western music most all the time." (Later, as a navy radio engineer during World War II, Thompson piped border-station programming through his ship on the high seas.) Thompson and other listeners heard Cowboy Slim Rinehart, Patsy Montana, the Carter Family, the Pickard Family, the Shelton Brothers, the Callahan Brothers, the International Hot Timers, Pappy O'Daniel's Hillbilly Boys, Roy "Lonesome Cowboy" Faulkner, Shelly Lee Alley, and countless others. Performers broadcast live and via transcription disc, sometimes syndicating a show on several of the maverick stations. Border radio pitchman and ad executive Don Baxter, known as "Major Kord," recorded many artists with this technology in San Antonio. Later, many of the transcription discs were used as roofing material for homes in Acuña and other border-station towns.
Important postwar stations included XEG in Monterrey and XERF in Ciudad Acuña. Webb Pierce, Jim Reeves, and other stars appeared live in the studio with XERF disc jockey Paul Kallinger, known from "coast to coast and border to border" as "Your Good Neighbor Along the Way." In a colorful exaggeration that could hold a nugget of truth, Pierce said that country music "might not have survived if it hadn't been for border radio."
The Good Neighbor turned down an appearance on his show by the future King of Rock, Elvis Presley. But in the early 1960s, a young platter-spinner from Brooklyn named Bob Smith metamorphosed into XERF's late-night saint of radio naughtiness, Wolfman Jack. From his border lair the Wolfman tantalized American listeners with rock-and-roll, rhythm-and-blues, and blues. Austin-based musician Joe Ely recalled listening to the Wolfman while drinking beer in Lubbock cottonfields: "It was the first time any of us heard John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, all these guys." Delbert McClinton remembered the border airwave as a mysterious force. "With border radio," he explained, "you could hear race music and funky stuff, and it only existed through this secret channel you could pick up from across the border."
Some border musicians played several roles, such as singing cowboy, evangelist, and pitchman. "Only three things will sell on the border," said Dallas "Nevada Slim" Turner, "health, sex, and religion." Often, border radio programming combined all three. The stations also became known for incessant advertisements for Hillbilly Flour, Crazy Water Crystals, the cold remedy Peruna, the hair-dye Kolorbak, Hadacol, vinyl tablecloths depicting the Last Supper, razor blades, genuine simulated diamonds, ballpoint pens, horoscopes, rosebushes, baby chicks, records, and many other products. Some listeners even claim to have heard commercials for "autographed photos of Jesus Christ."
In 1986 the Mexican government seized XERF, and all border stations were dealt a crippling blow by an international broadcasting agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed both Mexican and American broadcasters to use the other country's clear-channel frequencies for low-powered stations in the evening. That meant that the signals of the border stations would be drowned out in many communities by local broadcasts. The agreement effectively ended the era of high-powered, far-ranging radio.
Such enthusiasts as Arturo González, however, spearheaded efforts at a revival. In the early years of the new millennium, Del Rio attorney González, a force at XERF since the 1940s, was, in his nineties, laying plans to regain control of the station and contacting engineering firms to shop for a new super-powerful transmitter. Arturo González died at the age of 104 on December 21, 2012.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Border Radio Collection, 1917–[2010], Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Psychics, Pitchmen, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 1987."
More on Dr. Brinkley from the Handbook of Texas online: (
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"BRINKLEY, JOHN ROMULUS (1885–1942). John Romulus (changed to John Richard) Brinkley, controversial medical charlatan, broadcaster, and political candidate, the only son of John and Candice (Burnett) Brinkley, was born near Beta, Jackson County, North Carolina, on July 8, 1885. He was orphaned at an early age and was raised by an aunt. He married Sally Wike in 1908, and they had three daughters. In 1913 that marriage ended in divorce, and Brinkley married Minnie Telitha Jones. They had a son.
Brinkley was educated in a one-room school at Tuckasiegee, North Carolina, but never earned a diploma. From 1907 through 1915 he attended several diploma mills such as Bennett Medical College of Chicago and Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City. In spite of dubious credentials he was licensed by the state of Arkansas and set up a medical practice in Milford, Kansas. In 1918 he began performing his controversial "goat gland operation," designed to restore male virility and fertility by the implantation of goat glands. Before long more than 100 customers a week were receiving the $750 rejuvenation operation. As a result of the operations and a large patent medicine business, "Doc" Brinkley became extremely wealthy. In 1923 he constructed the first radio station in Kansas, KFKB, a powerful station that carried country music and fundamentalist preaching.
In 1928 the American Medical Association's executive secretary, Dr. Morris Fishbein, attacked Brinkley for diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medicines over the radio. Consequently, in 1930 the Kansas State Medical Board revoked Brinkley's medical license, and the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew his broadcasting license. Brinkley responded by entering the governor's race, hoping to appoint new members to the medical board. Running as an independent, write-in candidate, he came extremely close to winning–his loss coming only because thousands of votes were thrown out on technicalities. Subsequent bids for the governorship in 1932 and 1934 also failed.
In 1931 he received authority from Mexican officials to build a powerful transmitter at Villa Acuña, Mexico, across the river from Del Rio, Texas. In 1933 he moved his entire medical staff and facilities to the Roswell Hotel in Del Rio. He used his station, XER, to entice his listeners to visit his clinic or buy an array of gimmicks, among them ampules of colored water, at a price of six for $100. In Texas he rarely implanted goat glands, but substituted what he described as "commercial glandular preparations." He also performed numerous prostate operations and instituted the use of Mercurochrome shots and pills to help restore youthful vigor. Estimates are that he earned $12 million between 1933 and 1938.
During this period his conspicuous display of wealth–a lavish mansion, expensive cars, planes, yachts, and diamonds–was second to none. In 1938 he moved his medical activities to Little Rock, Arkansas, but maintained his residence in Texas. About that time he lost a libel suit against Fishbein, fought numerous malpractice suits, and battled the Internal Revenue Service over back taxes. In 1941 he was forced to file for bankruptcy. The following year circulatory problems led to the amputation of one of his legs, and on May 26, 1942, he died in San Antonio of heart failure. He was buried in Memphis, Tennessee.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Gerald Carson, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley (New York: Rinehart, 1960). Dictionary of American Biography. Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987). New York Times, May 27, 1942. Frank Wardlaw, "The Goat-Gland Man," Southwest Review 66 (Spring 1981)."