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The History of Jukeboxes in Americana

How the world turned on a dime Weren't jukeboxes always with us? Like rocks and air? It's hard to imagine America without them. Before iPod playlists, before boomboxes, before mix tapes, even before band t-shirts, it was the jukebox that helped us express who we are. You chose B-17 to say, "This is how I rock. This is how I roll." It was heady stuff. A little intimidating at first to walk into the neon green and red aura, to touch the sleek chrome reminiscent of every cool car you ever wanted. For a dime (three plays for a quarter), this behemoth of music taste would do your bidding, using your song to tell the world how you feel. In 1927 the Automatic Musical Instrument Company debuted a public coin-operated record player. Juke joints that survived on dance music couldn't always afford an orchestra, but they could sure afford a nickel. Jukeboxes fit where bands couldn't, and they kept their mouths shut during Prohibition.

Into the light

Wurlitzer, makers of grand, dramatic pipe organs, put the drama in jukeboxes in the 1930s. They knew the value of eye-popping lights and chrome, and incorporated bubble lights and neon tubes to hypnotize you out of your spare change.

Rock-Ola ran with the idea in the 1940s, dazzling patrons with its complicated mechanics. And it had the perfect name--an irony, because it was the given name of the company's founder, David Rockola, who had no music background whatsoever. His expertise was in coin-operated vending machines.

Music was brought to the diner by Seeburg, who invented the little tabletop jukebox that let you select songs right from your booth, with greasy cheeseburger fingers.

Neon: the universal color

Juke joints thrived. Diners blossomed, co-opting the neon and chrome designs for their storefronts. But perhaps the people who benefited the most from the rise of the jukebox were the likes of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, musicians whose music was deemed unfit for radio, but was chosen over and over by the fingertips of the people. As it turned out, the gleaming neon jukebox was colorblind.

The jukebox today

We haven't changed. Let us choose our music, and give us our dazzling displays, and top it with a dollop of root beer float memories. Today's jukeboxes are history in a box, playing everything from LP vinyl records to CDs to MP3s straight from the Internet. USB turntables transfer your old records to your computer. But you still get to pick the song you think the world needs to hear.