Jukebox Celebrates 100th Birthday: Songwriters Celebrate Jukebox Memories

How many of us have put a nickel or quarter into a jukebox, watched the record drop down onto the turntable and turn round as we listened to our favorite tune?How many of us have put a nickel or quarter into a jukebox, watched the record drop down onto the turntable and turn round as we listened to our favorite tune?

The jukebox celebrated it’s 100th anniversary on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1989 – and while that box of lights and sound might not have been among our top ten things to be thankful for this past Thanksgiving, most of us would have to agree that it has been a part of our social life and may have even been an influence on the music we listen to today.

The first time I can remember seeing and hearing a jukebox was in a little dairy bar called the TeePee (we were the Riesel Indians) where all the kids would hang out in my hometown in Texas. I remember being fascinated that I could put a nickel (does that date me?) in the jukebox and play my favorite song over again. At the time, I didn’t have a record player at home, so I am sure I spent a good part of my allowance on six plays for a quarter, listening to Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Herman’s Hermits, Johnny Horton, the Rolling Stones and Wynn Stewart.

During the country Music Association Awards show in October, Michael Martin Murphey performed “Jukebox,” a song he co-wrote with keyboardist David Hoffner. It was CMA’s way of recognizing the anniversary of the jukebox and the part it has played in the popularity of country music. The two writers composed it as their tribute to the jukebox.

“We were riding on the bus writing songs for the “Americana” album, that would have been 1986, and we had been working on “You’re History,” and we got stuck,” Hoffner recalled. “Sometimes when you get stuck on one thing, if you write on something else for awhile it helps. Michael had the idea to write about the jukebox, and we wrote the song in about 45 minutes.”

Hoffnet said they went for an early Elvis Presley feel to the music for the song, and just started throwing out lines and names to each other and the song just fell in place.

“The jukebox was the social center and a focus for a lot of people over the years when there wasn’t a band around, and I liked that imagery,” Murphey recalled. “I always enjoyed the whole experience of having a jukebox in a place where you could drop in the money and play the song you wanted to hear. I guess the jukebox has developed sort of a mystique over the years. There’s a certain kind of songs one pictures coming over the jukebox that’s different from what you would hear coming over the radio.

“I guess the song is a tribute to my own experience, and it was only later that I found out the jukebox was nearing its 100th anniversary. The jukebox is an important part of the music that we’ve all listened to over the years and the jukebox has figured pretty heavily in country music over the years.”

Louis Glass had a vision in 1889 when he installed his first coin-operated machine in San Francisco’s Palais Royale Saloon, but I wonder if he knew just what he had created. At one time there were more than 700,000 jukeboxes in America. Today there are approximately 225,000 jukeboxes sitting in bars, restaurants, diners, family centers, games arcades and even in private homes across the states. The jukebox has continued to evolve to the point of videoboxes as well as those which play compact discs. It’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen with it next.

“I think celebrating the 100th anniversary of the jukebox has really helped people realize what a great tradition the jukebox is,” Murphey said. “It’s kind of the American way – yu pay your money and you get the song you want to hear. It’s the only place we’re totally free to control what we hear, except at home where we can go out and buy the record and play what we want to hear.”

Neither Murphey or Hoffner could remember exactly the first time they heard or saw a jukebox, but both knew what they remembered most about it.

“The first time I heard it was the first time I’d really heard bass,” Hoffner recalled. “You know, the jukebox had bigger speakers than the radio or record player that we had at home, and sometimes you could almost feel the floor reverberate from the bass coming out of those speakers. I remember being enthralled with that sound.”

Murphey remembers the aura surrounding the place where a jukebox was located.

“I would go to the local hamburger joint after school and just feed quarters into the thing,” he says. “We all had radios and record players but that didn’t take away from the excitement of the jukebox. A little malt shop could instantly be converted into a place where kids could dance in a situation where no alcohol was being served. It was a form of music that took entertainment outside the barroom situation. I think it played a role in getting youth wrapped up in music.

“I remember in junior high school, I used to walk home from school, back in the days when a kid could still feel safe walking home, and I’d stop off at this little malt shop and feed quarters in the jukebox and dance with my girlfriends and have a nice afternoon and use up all the money left over from lunch and my allowance.”

Most of us have similar memories. Even today, the first thing I do when I see a jukebox is walk over and see what the selections are. If I should find one of my favorites there, the quarter usually drops in, the record goes round and round and the music flows.

BIOS

Singer/songwriter Michael Martin Murphey is a native Texan who lives in Taos, New Mexico. He is the spokesperson for American Songwriter magazine, and has written such classics as “Wildfire,” “Geronimo’s Cadillac” and “Cherokee Fiddle.” He recognizes and records great songs by other writers as well, including “What’s Forever For,” “Long Line Of Love” and “I’m Gonna Miss You Girl.” “Jukebox” can be found on his Land of Enchantment album on Warner Brothers.

Keyboardist David Hoffner moved to Nashville from Timonium, Maryland in 1981. He worked with the Thrasher Brothers before joining Michael Martin Murphey’s Rio Grand Band six years ago. Being on the road with Murphey provides them opportunities to write together and Murphey has recorded several of his tunes. Hoffner finds time to be a producer and studio musician when he’s not on the road with Murphey, and has released his own album True Blue.

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