TOKYO — Nobody remembers "Big Smith" or "Roger Gordon" anymore.

That's what Robert W. Smith called himself nearly two decades ago when he was spinning platters for radio audiences in Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Va., and Shreveport, La.

It's taken 17 years, a "Mexican war," a stint selling prayer cloths, baby chickens and record packages for him to make it. Now, nobody can forget the washboard voice that bellows, "Owooooo! Here come da Wolfman! Ooooh, mercy, baaaaabeh! Right ooooon!"

Shaggy-haired and goateed Wolfman Jack, heard almost daily over 2,200 radio stations in 40 countries, flew into Tokyo International Airport Monday for a week of taping talk shows and commercials for an electronics firm.

He'll also be cutting radio spots for the Far East Network and Pacific Stars and Stripes and appearing at the Yokota AB Youth Center Thursday.

The Wolfman — who celebrated his 37th birthday Wednesday — is unquestionably one of the most listened-to disc jockeys in the United States and, through his syndicated American Forces Network show, overseas.

How he got to the top is as wild as his shows.

He was "Big Smith" and "Roger Gordon" when he started the climb at WOOK in Washington, WYOU in Norfolk and KCIJ in Shreveport in 1959.

A, year later, when he sold his howling, growling and grunting to XERF — a 250,000 watt prayer cloth station in Acuna, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Del Rio. Tex. — he became who he's been ever since, "Wolfman Jack."

The first few weeks there were as hair-raising as his voice.

The story varies with each telling, but he says he plans to make the latest version into a "macaroni western." He tells it with rolling eyes and animated gestures.

When he arrived in Del Rio, XERF was in Mexican government-ordered receivership because the owner, Arturo Gonzales, hadn't paid his taxes for several years.

"Gonzales had told the prayer cloth preachers who were on the station they could be on the air forever, for life, if they'd give him $200,000 or something like that. He collected $3-4 million, buried it and didn't give the government anything."

Miffed, Mexican authorities put the station into receivership, but Gonzales used his influence to get his own man appointed receiver. He still wasn't paying anybody, Wolfman said, including XERF's 25 employees.

"When I got there, the workers were very upset with the whole situation and they wanted to appoint one of their own boys as receiver so they could get paid," Wolfman recalled.

He sided with the workers.

"I happened on the scene with my record machine and told them we'd arm the station and send this guy off to Mexico City and make him the receiver. In return, they'd appoint me the U.S. representative of the station" — the guy to receive all the U.S. advertising money.

"So I got in my 1960 Oldsmobile Starfire 350horsepower convertible and boogied over to San Antonio and picked up a lot of guns and ammunition. 30-30s. Pistols. Even found a machinegun without a firing mechanism. I got one made, loaded the stuff in some trucks and went back across the border.

"We put sandbags and barbed wire all over the station. Put the machinegun on the roof. Looked like a fort! We wanted to keep the bad guys (Gonzales, his receiver and their "pistoleros") out.

"After about a week, I went back to Shreveport to get Wolfwoman (his wife, Lou) and brought her to Del Rio.

"I was lyin' in bed listenin' to th' radio when all of a sudden a little Mexican cat gets on th' air hollerin', 'Pistoleros! Pistoleros!' and I hear bullets goin' 'Ping! Chung! Chow!' all over th' place."

Wolfman boogied for the border.

"We got a whole bunch of guys, It was like th' cavalry arrivin'. These other guys were circlin' th' station on horseback and in trucks an' shootin' at th' guys in th' station.

"We chased 'em off. One guy got killed. Got his head blown off. Several guys inside th' station got shoulder and stomach wounds, but nobody else got killed."

"After that, nobody ever bothered me."

Wolfman paid the Mexican government the back taxes over the next four years and the station went back to Gonzales, now a friend. The gravel-voiced platter pusher moved to XERB, also a 250,000-watt station, in Tijuana in 1964.

There, his fortune was in selling baby chickens and record packages by mail and that phase of his life was depicted in the 1973 hit movie "American Graffiti."

"Kids in America always thought I was comin' in on a banned frequency or broadcasting from an airplane. I was a mysterious voice in the night on a station they never lost."

That mystique, the faceless voice that people could figure as black, white or Mexican, boosted him toward fame.

In 1971, Don Kelley, Wolfman's manager, had him learn to sing and dance and cut records and he moved to KDAY in Los Angeles. "The Rolling Stones" were touring the States then and the Wolfman's career got another boost when he became Mick Jagger's only link with the public. He wouldn't talk to anybody else.

"American Graffiti" catapulted him to stardom and he moved to WNBC in New York City where he became host of "Midnight Special," — shown on Japanese television — the longest running TV rock and roll show on the air, he says. He was also doing road shows with "The Guess Who."

He's been the subject of 12 hit records, appeared on 10 TV shows including "The Odd Couple," "Sonny and Cher," "Emergency" and is a regular on "Celebrity Sweepstakes."

He tapes five shows a week for American Forces Radio and makes commercials for the Air Force and commercial firms.

Where does he get his energy?

"From the acceptance and love he gets everywhere he goes," his manager, Kelley, says. "There's nothing greater."

"I'm not really doing it for the money," Wolfman says. "I just wants boogie on with my career."

What's in the future?

"I just found out that when I return from Tokyo I'll be a regular with Redd Foxx on his 'Sanford and Son' series."

He's also planning production of a new TV show in Canada in the fall.

"I love to rock and roll. I change with the times and do my thing with any kind of situation. I could even play Japanese music and I'd still fit in somewhere.

"I hope to be doing rock and roll when I'm 85. I never want to get off radio."