When I saw the album cover on the auction table, it brought back some long-forgotten memories:
The Wagon Wheel, a small nightclub at the end of a long moonlit country road in the heart of Georgia. My sister, cousins, friends and I headed to hear Wild Man Steve assault our ears with jokes more blue than Redd Foxx’s.
I can still hear him intone: “The W-i-i-i-ild Man.”
Steve was a handsome guy with a filthy mouth, but he was oh-so-funny. We went to see him whenever he came to the small black nightclub – one large room, really, with a few tables and chairs, and plenty of booze to buy – near our hometown. He was the male comedic counterpart to singer Millie Jackson, whose bawdiness we loved just as much.
The album at auction – titled “My Man Wild Man” – showed what would be considered a very sexist image today, but I’m sure that my sister and I had it in our collection. In fact, she may still have it.
Wild Man Steve rode the chitlin’ circuit through small Southern juke joints in the 1970s much like others had done in the decades before him. He brought a welcome release on Friday and Saturday nights after a long hard week of working. People could dance and drink and love their worries away, before going to church on Sunday and starting the miserable grind all over again on Monday.
I didn’t go to wash away work. I had a job that offered some respect – if not a lot of money – and I went to be entertained by Steve and Millie, LTD and the Manhattans. Redd Foxx never made it to the Wagon Wheel – he was much too big a star – but the others did.
At the time, I never really knew or cared much about who Wild Man Steve was. I didn’t even know his full name. But after seeing the album at auction, I became curious.
He was born Steve Gallon in Monticello, FL, but grew up in Waterbury, CT. He started out on a radio station in Waterbury – where he apparently became known as “Wild Man” – eventually landing at stations in Boston and finally in Miami. He was a concert promoter in the 1960s and 1970s, and recorded about a dozen albums in the 1970s and 1980s.
- A photo of Wild Man Steve from the back of the album cover.
He toured and performed in the Caribbean with his “Wild Man Steve Review,” while booking other entertainers such as Rudy Ray Moore and Millie Jackson. He also worked with and knew some of the top performers, including Foxx, Flip Wilson, Slappy White and James Brown.
The “official” Wild Man website identified him as an “adult comedy legend” who told-it-like-it-was. That’s what I remembered about him: his comedy was sexually charged and he told it unabashedly. In an interview with Moore, Gallon explained their form of comedy:
“We have a gentleman’s approach to our comedy. And we’re basically there to make you laugh, not to insult you or to insult your integrity.”
The album at auction was said to be his first – released around 1969 or 1970 – and sold one million copies. He appeared in several film, including his own “Super Soul Brother (1979),” “Petey Wheatstraw (1977)” and “The Guy from Harlem (1977).”
My juke-joint days ended when I left Georgia for a job in Florida. I never knew what happened to Wild Man Steve, but one website noted that he spent much of his retirement working with the unemployed. He died in 2004 at age 78.
