The top ten all time jukebox hits:

1. Hound Dog, Elvis Presley
2. Crazy, Patsy Cline
3. Old Time Rock & Roll, Bob Seger
4. I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye
5. Don’t Be Cruel, Elvis Presley
6. Rock Around The Clock, Bill Haley & His Comets
7. Hey Jude, The Beatles
8. The Dock Of The Bay, Otis Redding
9. Lady, Kenny Rogers
10. Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White, Perez Prado

Jukeboxes made many artists famous without them even being allowed to air their songs on radio. This fact sometimes fuelled their popularity although in 1953 some counties in South Carolina banned the jukebox within earshot of any church.

In Texas the Parks Department removed rock and roll records from jukeboxes at swimming pools deeming it unsuitable for teenagers.

Pop music was labelled hedonistic and too tribal for mainstream culture. John Lennon became an enemy of the state and Bob Dylan was monitored by the FBI.

BBC radio was against any music that did not live up to its idealistic view of culture. Popular music was considered bad while original music was good. However, this didn’t stop the widespread access to American music via the jukebox. The BBC was powerless to stop it.

In the US, jukeboxes prevented discrimination of artists based on their race as listeners were unable to tell whether the artist was black or white in pre-war America. However, the US radio stations did their best to restrict them.

Felix Mendelssohn said that “music is more specific about what it expresses than words written about those expressions could ever be”

David Eaton, a musician himself believes that “any thinking, caring, probing musician should seriously contemplate a series of questions regarding music’s origins, its spiritual, religious and mystical properties, its moral and ethical power, its transcendent qualities, the role of the arts and artists and the importance of art in general, and music in particular”.

Music has the power to inspire a generation but it can also degrade culture. One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. I happen to agree with Bob Marley on that one, may he rest in peace.

(This article follows on from History Of The Jukebox, Part 1)

The music source of jukeboxes progressed from steel combs to wax records, to a variety of vinyl records and to the modern day jukeboxes that use cds, mp3s, DVDs and Satellite downloads. When the 45rpm vinyl was released in 1950 it became the standard and was adopted until CDs replaced them in 1980s.

Jukeboxes were installed into juke joints, restaurants, saloons, diners and homes and provided welcome relief from the trouble times of the depression and imminent war. Following the end of World War II the popularity of the jukebox had a resurgence as the restrictions on manufacturing them were lifted. Wulitzer’s 1946 model was the most popular and remained a hit until the mid 1960’s. During that Golden Age the user could escape through the slot with that nickel and be transported to another world of beautiful marbled catalin plastic, neon lights, bubbles and the most popular music available.

The jukeboxes of the 1940s were called Golden Age jukeboxes because of their yellow Catalin plastic on their fascia’s and those of the 1950s are called Silver Age because of their chrome fascias.

Jukeboxes contained counters to record the number of plays of each record ensuring that only the most popular music would remain in the cabinet. With clever trickery and the development of the electronic components users could be fooled into thinking that they alone had paid for the song that was playing when in fact it was more than likely that several users had paid for it.

Jukeboxes had their heyday in the 1950s and during this period the development of wallboxes enabled diners to select music from their table, the number of songs available increased,they became aesthetically pleasing, treasured objects. The decline of partner dancing lead to the end of an era for jukeboxes. Big chain restaurants preferred their customers to eat and leave instead of hang around and dance.

There remains a huge appetite for vinyl jukeboxes and their original cabinets – mostly for nostalgic reasons. Antique jukeboxes are collected by enthusiasts and new jukeboxes are bought as luxury items, a must have for the games room. Jukeboxes have a faithful following and a thriving restoration and collectors community that show knowledge and keen enthusiasm.

The modern day jukeboxes have iPod docks and are usually smaller than the classic jukeboxes. The majority of them are wall mounted but still capture the spirit of the traditional large machine. They usually contain about 100 discs. The most advanced technology currently being used in jukeboxes are digital satellite downloaded music or DVDs replacing CDs to accommodate up to 1,000 songs.

The technologically advanced jukeboxes,however, have not dampened people’s appetite for authentic and original automatic music machines. The Sharpsichord, a unique instrument designed by Artist Henry Dagg is still being built even though it is four years behind schedule. The dedication of this talented enthusiast for dramatic sound has not been dampened. It was funded by the UK’s Big Lottery Fund and is solar powered. It works on the same principle as a barrel organ. Mr Dagg said “it is designed really as a composing machine – I want people to come and play their own pieces on it”. Perhaps the future of jukeboxes lies in the user’s ability to create their own rock and roll.

Jukeboxes originate from the musical Snuff Boxes of the 18th Century called Carillons a Musique. The original snuff boxes were tiny and pocket-sized. They were clockwork and contained metal cylinders which, in later models, could be swapped to play different tunes. These tiny boxes were further developed into large table top boxes with interchangeable cylinders. The cylinders often ‘programmed’ to play a system of bellows and levers to produce wind to play a wind instrument or pluck the strings on a string instrument.

A good example of an early jukebox is the Orchestrian. It was designed to sound like an orchestra, had a large cylinder with pins to act as the music program. Some Orchestrian produced piano, percussion and wind sounds simultaneously.

The coin operated music boxes and phonographs of the 1870s produced sound using a set of pins placed on a revolving drum or disc which plucked the tuned teeth of a steel comb. Some also contained bells. Later came the development of wax cylinders, and tin foil drums, that could play music more than once leading to an appreciation of recorded music but what really fuelled people’s appetites was the proliferation of coin-in-the-slot phonographs in public places in 1890s. The phonograph maintained its popularity until the advent of radio in the 1920s and the economic depression of the 1930s.

The revolving cylinders were referred to as records and the early ones were sometimes made of wax or tin foil which deteriorated after a couple of plays. The Indestructible Record Company produced cylinder records made of celluloid that didn’t wear out for 1000’s of plays.

The flat disc was developed to compete with the cylinder records. Cylinder records went out of production in 1929 but their decline started when the industry leaders, Columbia Records, mass produced a double sided disc. However, the method of recording sound onto the flat discs had not yet been standardised until the early 1940s.

In 1918 Hobart Niblack patented a design that automated the changing of records which eventually contributed to the first jukebox, an Automatic Phonograph, being manufactured in 1927 by the Automated Musical Instrument Company (AMI).

In 1928 an electrostatic loudspeaker was attached to a coin-operated record player giving the user the a choice of 8 records. The world’s first electrically amplified multi selection phonograph was created by the Automated Music Instrument Company.

In 1950 the Seeburg Corporation introduced a 45rpm vinyl record jukebox which made the shellac 78rpm dominated jukeboxes obsolete. However, it took a while for the 78rpm jukeboxes to be taken out of use – they were simply shipped to the poorer areas.

The jukebox took its name from the ‘Juke  Joints’ of the south eastern United States. During the times of slavery, community rooms on plantations were provided for African Americans to socialise. The juke joints evolved after the Emancipation and allowed the patrons of the juke joints a chance to dance, drink, dine, gamble and trade goods. The word Juke may originate from a Gullah word Joog which means disorderly or rowdy. Gullah is a language spoken in Sierra Leone.