Next step in the vinyl revolution? The return of the jukebox.
I know a guy with a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox. He’s loaded with all manner of cool 7-inch singles, from hardcore 45s from the 80s to classic Motown of the 60s. The whole project of restoring the jukebox and sourcing all the music was a multi-year labour of love. It was also very expensive.
I’d love the same sort of thing in my home office, but the budget’s just not there. That, however, is not stopping some people. This is from NPR.
In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Perry Rosen walks over to a 1967 Rock-Ola Imperial jukebox, punches in a letter and a number and smiles as the song “Spooky” by Dennis Yost and the Classics IV starts spinning.
Jukeboxes have fascinated Rosen since childhood. But unlike other kids whose eyes were drawn to the bubbles rising up through the colorful tubes, Rosen says he was always looking through the cracks in the front door or the dome glass, trying to understand how these machines worked.
Rosen’s father was an auto parts salesman. One day he saw a broken jukebox at a local gas station and offered the owner $75 for it, thinking it would make a nice gift for his mechanically inclined son. Over the next week, Rosen, then 16, took the device completely apart and then put it back together again in perfect working order. He explains that the jukebox we’re listening to is that very machine.
