The joint..think Chuck Berry and "School Days"...down to the juke joint we go in. Juke joints and boxes had hit middleclass white America who were driven by a new sound, a new beat, a drum heavy, guitar laced narcotic that spilled forth from the local jukebox...three foreplays for a quarter. The jukebox was king of the hill..a repository of vinyl treasure that reacted to the descending needle as a virgin reacts to experienced hands at work and play after copping a feel and reaching down below to the soft and fertile delta....it was the carnal catalyst to a Teenage Garden of Eden.
Before you have a garden, you need to plant the technological seed before a techno-product can spawn and make it's way upstream into mainstream pop culture.The first jukeboxes were rudimentary affairs consisting of paper rolls, metal disks or cylinders that played music when a coin was inserted into the slot. The cost a nickel a tune and in turn were referred to as Nickel in the Slots. The Cheech and Chong of Jukebox fame were Louis Glass and William Arnold who in 1889 placed a coin op'd Edison cylinder phonograph in San Francisco..the city by the bay in the forefront of foreplay, eh? There was no external amp so the listeners had to gain musical access through listening tubes, which by the way were limited to four at the time. Prior to these in the Jukebox Jurassic period there simple music boxes that jangled out a tune and player pianos in many a saloon for the patrons to dance to after hitting the spitoon.
Early jukes were hand cranked which wound the spring motor tighter than a coiled rattlesnake and would automatically guide the stylus to the groove. Although a cool process, no one thought to call it groovy even then. That came later in the Sixties and had nothing to do with it..I have no idea where that term came from nor will admit to ever using it in polite conversation in Haight Ashbury, but then you'd know I was lying and full of groovy shit! Cool...
The limitations brought on by having to listen through a limited number of tubes that could only accomodate a few listeners at a time, enterprising entrepeneurs set up phonograph parlors with multiple machines to pack the house and pocket the profits. Most machines could only hold and play one recording at a time and had to be changed as often as your aging parents diapers.
In 1918, now that the Great War had ended, a machine was manufactured that could play multiple selections, and by 1928 a gentleman named Seeburg, who up until now made player pianos, played techno-matchmaker and by mating an electrostatic loudspeaker with a record player that was coin operated..spare changing it so to speak, you now had eight records, top hits of the day to choose from. It was called the Seeburg Audiophone and was a Rube Goldberg contraption with mulitple turntables mounted on what looked like a miniature Ferris wheel. This eventually expanded to ten turntables on a spindle for your three coins in the fountain three plays for a quarter listening pleasure. Soon the jukebox got fuel injected with amplification and the race was on.
One of the early proponents who knew how to make music and a jukebox partners in musical crime was the country western singer, Ernest Tubb...a true honky tonker he realized that where there were jukeboxes the crowd was loud and would drown up the music so he brought amplification to his guitar to compete with the crowd which at the time for country music purists was a no no..ampliciation..my god, that was like coming out of the country closet..but what the hell..it is Ernest Tubb, right? Try telling him "No" with a guitar in one hand and a .45 (and I don't mean RPM record!) in the other..his other favorite instrument had six shots while the other had six strings!
The term jukebox derived from "juke" which generally meant rowdy and wicked, more ghetto terms that permeated popular music culture..such as the term jazz..which was basically a Harlem turn of the 20th century term for "jism" to "jizz" hence..jazz! Rock and roll was another ghetto phrase disguising the term sex..to rock and roll...was to ..well, rock and roll! So is that a rocket 88 in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me.
Styling was not forgotten either. The jukeboxes were works of electronic art and by the 1940's post Art Deco mortem era they were form and functionality beautifully blended together with lights and colored plastic with a junkies overdose of neon and color.
The machines were innovative as they had "counters" however it only counted the times the record was chosen and played, not as to side A or side B. Great marketing to determine which records to shit can and which to keep. Eventually like the old Univac room size computers of Fifties yore..the jukebox a behemoth was downsized as well for table tops for those close encounters at the malt shop. Also by the 1950's 78 rpms were replaced by the 45 rpm hits and stereo boxes were introduced in the early Sixties, along with lava lamps and LSD!
Vinyl has gone away...but making a comeback, but maybe not for jukeboxes..although we can hold onto our musical marxian dreams of vinyl revolution and resurgence. Today, the box is still around, (the old classic ones highly collectible) but is musically filled with sound from MP3 downloads, CD's and internet connected media players. I wonder if anyone still plays the familiar jukebox hit of "A-11" by Buck Owens on their classic Rockola, Seeburg or Wurlitzer?