RELAX MUSIC presents the HISTORY of the JUKEBOX
85RELAX MUSIC presents the HISTORY of the JUKEBOX:
A Dime to Dance
In some bars you can still find some, mostly as a piece of furniture. They are rarely still functional but, even if they no longer play the music of the past, the jukeboxes contribute to making the environment more welcoming and party-loving, with that 80s touch that never hurts.
It was in the early 80s the theater of the jukebox success: every respectable bar owned one, so that customers could, in a few simple steps, choose a song, insert a coin and voilà, the game was done.
Our story, however, begins a long time before: the first prototypes of jukeboxes date back to the last years of the nineteenth century but it was from the 30s of the following century that some manufacturers began to perfect their models and compete with each other. Specifically, these are some American houses such as Wurlitzer, Seeburg, Rock-Ola and Ami. The rivalry between the different manufacturers became more and more ruthless as the jukebox took hold and entered the lives of millions of people as a source of entertainment.
The first jukeboxes were basically wooden boxes inside which were the discs which, through a complex system of levers and mechanical arms, were taken and placed on the turntable to be listened to.
The heart of the device consisted precisely of this exchange system which, over the years, was perfected more and more by the manufacturers, each of which specialized on a personal system.
In the same years, radio and television sets also saw a great development, on a technical level. Despite this, the production sector linked to jukeboxes knew no rivals as it was able to bring entertainment out of homes and in meeting places such as bars, where it was possible not only to listen to music in company, but also to dance it.
With the advancement of technology, even the jukeboxes changed both internally, adopting increasingly sophisticated systems for picking up and reading discs, but also externally: they were covered with colored tubes, LEDs and gradually took on the appearance which still makes them so recognizable to us today.
Taking a step back again, let's go back to the years of the Second World War: all the major jukebox manufacturers had to convert to war material producers. It was a dark time for everyone, of sadness and destruction. But, as soon as the war was over, the music began to play again, stronger than before and, with it, it also resumed the production and sale of jukeboxes, increasingly requested to forget the past and think about a future full of new songs. The jukebox thus became one of the symbols of the years of the economic boom, of the desire for rebirth and redemption that everyone was feeling on their own skin.
Let's go back to the 70s and 80s, the period of greatest diffusion of the device: those of our readers who remember the sitcoms and films of those years will also know how much the jukebox had become the beating heart of the sociality of the time, the point around to which greater aggregation was created.
The technological process that had brought the jukebox into vogue was also what decreed its descent: the end of the 80s also marked the inexorable decline of the device. The last examples of jukeboxes resisted until the early 2000s and were then definitively abandoned for more modern entertainment methods, such as the portable disc player and MP3 which made musical enjoyment much easier, being portable, but which they brought sociality back to the background, as both devices were usable by only one person at a time.
Despite this, even today some nostalgics wish to own a jukebox to dance, just like Fonzie, to the notes of an old rockabilly vinyl. Precisely for this reason the jukebox has begun to be considered as a real design object with a not exactly cheap price. If you are looking for a bargain and if you still have a dusty jukebox from some old relative of a bar manager in your attic, now is the time to give it a polish.
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