Rock Around the Jukebox

QUESTION: My husband recently purchased an old jukebox for a game room we created in our basement.  It’s a Wurlitzer 1015, and considering it’s 68 years old, it still plays pretty well. He paid $3,500 for it. Can you tell me more about this machine and others like it? Did my husband get taken on this deal?

ANSWER: While the jukebox is more or less a thing of the past, a few still exist in arcades and road houses off the beaten path and in the private collections of people who yearn for a return to those happy days. The one your husband purchased is the most popular of the oldies but goodies and normally sells for twice that amount.  

A jukebox, for those of you who may not know, is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that plays selections from self-contained media, at first records, then CDs.. The classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers that restaurant, diner, and bar patrons pushed  in combination to choose and play a specific selection at first for a 10 cents, then later 25 cents, 50 cents, and upwards.

The earliest jukebox was called a  a "nickel-in-the-slot phonograph," and it came about in the late 1880s. The state-of-the-art invention, engineered by Louis Glass and William S. Arnold of San Francisco, was a coin-operated machine that was a modification of the phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison. Upon receiving a coin, unlocked the mechanism, allowing the listener to turn a crank which simultaneously wound the spring motor and placed the reproducer's stylus in the starting groove. Frequently exhibitors would equip many of these machines with listening tubes, similar to acoustic headphones, and array them in "phonograph parlors" allowing the patron to select between multiple records, each played on its own machine. Some machines even contained carousels and other mechanisms for playing multiple records. Most machines were capable of holding only one musical selection, the automation coming from the ability to play that one selection at will. The first of these music players was put at the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco on November 23, 1889. 

The jukebox continued to evolve. Hobart C. Niblack invented a way for the machine to automatically change records in 1918. This led the Automated Musical Instrument Company (AMI) to produce an innovative type of jukebox. Initially playing music recorded on wax cylinders, the shellac 78 rpm record dominated jukeboxes in the early part of the 20th century. 

In 1928, Justus P. Seeburg, who manufactured player pianos, combined an electrostatic loudspeaker with a coin-operated record player and gave the listener a choice of eight records. This Audiophone machine was wide and bulky and had eight separate turntables mounted on a rotating Ferris wheel-like device, allowing patrons to select from eight different records. Later versions of the jukebox included Seeburg's Selectophone, with 10 turntables mounted vertically on a spindle. By maneuvering the tone arm up and down, the customer could select from 10 different records.

Song-popularity counters told the owner of the machine the number of times each record had been played, which allowed the owner to replace less-played songs with more popular ones.

 

The term "jukebox" came into use in the United States around 1940, apparently derived from the familiar usage "juke joint", derived from the word "juke" meaning disorderly, rowdy, or wicked.

Jukeboxes had once been enclosed in wooden cabinets, but by 1937 manufacturers had begun to make them of gaudy plastic, frosted glass, jeweled mirrors, and chrome ornaments. Many of those Art Deco creations were self-contained light shows with polarized revolving disks, bubble tubes, and flashing pilasters. 

In the 1940s, the jukebox started evolving into the version we know today with colorful designs. Manufacturing stopped during World War II, however, as the materials were needed for the war effort. After the war, jukebox manufacturing continued, with the Seeburg Corporation introducing the vinyl record jukebox that used 45 rpm records. 

During those golden years, the Leonardo da Vinci of jukebox design was Wurlitzer's Paul Fuller, who was responsible for 13 full-size machines, five table models, and numerous speakers. The Golden Age of jukebox design ended when he suffered a heart attack in 1944 and died the next year. By then a new generation of larger jukeboxes had appeared, and the classic machines from the golden years—1937 to 1949—were, for the most part, relegated to the junk heap and forgotten. 

 became an important, and profitable, part of any jukebox installation. They enabled restaurant patrons to select tunes from their table or booth. One example is the Seeburg 3W1, introduced in 1949 as companion to the 100-selection Model M100A jukebox. Stereo sound became popular in the early 1960s, and wallboxes of the era came with built-in speakers, enabling patrons to sample this latest technology.

The popularity of jukeboxes extended from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, but they were particularly fashionable in the 1950s. By the middle of the 1940s, three-quarters of the records produced in America went into jukeboxes.

And even with all of today’s high-tech music devices, the sound from one of those old machines was fabulous. Nothing beats hearing an old 78 on a machine created just to play it. Those were the days.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The  Vernacular Style" in the 2024 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The New Kid on the Block

QUESTION:  This lamp has been in the family for reportedly over 100 years. It does not have a signature of any kind. The lighting fixture itself had been missing and my father installed a new one some years back. Is there any way to date and identify the maker of this piece?

ANSWER: Looking at your hanging lamp, it doesn’t look to be over 100 years old. Most likely it dates from the 1920s, maybe slightly earlier, based on the configuration of the socket frame.

Although Thomas Alva Edison is often given the credit for inventing the electric light bulb in 1879, the actual creation can be credited to several people, each of whom improved upon the basic concept.

In 1875, Henry Woodward received a patent for an electric light bulb. And four years later, Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan received a patent for a carbon-thread incandescent lamp. Edison initially worked with J. P. Morgan and a few privileged customers in New York City in the 1880s to light their homes, pairing his new incandescent bulbs with small generators.

In 1878, Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp and on October 14, 1878, Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights." So it could be said that Thomas Edition created the first “commercially practical” incandescent light.

The first electric lamps, however, were nothing more than electrified gas lamps. Often the manufacturer didn’t know which sockets to use, so they put in a variety in the same lamp, and the wiring left a lot to be desired. Safety wasn’t even thought of much back then. Even the light bulbs were different. There was no standardization like we’ve known through the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st. The electric lighting industry took a while to take off.

Back at the turn of the 20th century, electricity was just beginning to find its way into the homes of average Americans. Before that, it was mostly a new toy of the wealthy.

A number of improvements occurred as the 20th century dawned. Peter Cooper Hewitt created the first commercial mercury-vapor lamp in 1901. Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman invented the tungsten filament for incandescent light bulbs. In 1904.

By 1913, Irving Langmuir had discovered that inert gas could double the luminous efficacy of incandescent light bulbs. Burnie Lee Benbow patented the coiled coil filament in 1917. But the most far-reaching improvement was the production by Junichi Miura of the first incandescent light bulb to use a coiled coil filament in 1921. Finally, in 1925, Marvin Pipkin invented the first internal frosted light bulb.

All these improvements had lamp makers reeling. Once the electric light bulb had finally been stabilized, they saw the opportunity to use this constant source of even light to their advantage.

As household electricity became increasingly common and the light bulb more stable and long lasting, so lamp manufacturers started paying attention to the art of lighting indoor spaces. Shades gave lamp makers an opportunity to shine a light on their sense of aesthetics, whether it was to create a romantic background glow or an eye-catching centerpiece.

Lamp makers of the early 20th century looked to the Art Nouveau style, with it plant and animal motifs, to inspire their designs. Manufacturers were soon creating shades in a spectrum of colored glass, either hand-cut into complex patterns or blown into natural forms like flowers.

Louis Comfort Tiffany designed and made some of the most recognizable Art Nouveau lamps, including shades made from iridescent Favrile glass or intricate stained glass mosaics. Originally conceived by designer Clara Driscoll, Tiffany’s Dragonfly lamp shade is possibly the Studio’s most famous, featuring minuscule glass pieces in each detailed dragonfly wing. Such shades were created using a leaded-glass technique the company perfected for stained-glass windows. Capitalizing on the Tiffany trend, companies like Duffner & Kimberly, Gorham, and Seuss also created ornate stained-glass shades in the early 20th century.

Because electricity for mass use was in its infancy in the first decade of the 20th century, no two lamp manufacturers used the same electrical components. Although   the sockets in your lamp have been replaced, the lamp, itself, is more sophisticated than those produced say from 1900 to 1910. A lot of manufacturers produced lamps like this. The thickness of the glass and the soldering of the lead came indicated that this lamp was made in a small factory, most likely by hand. But without a signature of any sort, it’s hard to tell exactly which company produced it.

 To read more articles on antiques, please visit my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac.

Victory Music

QUESTION: I was helping my mother clean out my grandmother’s house after she died when I found several old records that said V-Disc on the label stuffed in a trunk in the attic. I’ve never heard of a company with a V-Disc label and neither had my mother. One of them seems to have two songs sung by Frank Sinatra—“What Makes the Sunset?” and “I Begged Her.” It also says the record was produced in cooperation with the War Department, Special Services Division. Can you tell me anything about these records? Do they have any value or are they just old records and should be tossed?

ANSWER: It seems you found some little treasures during your cleaning. V-Discs were a special type of record made for servicemen serving abroad in World War II. Most soldiers and sailors joined up thinking that the war would be over in a short time. Little did they realize that it would drag on for several years. Weary and often disheartened, they needed a moral boost, and the V-Disc was it.

The records were 12-inch, 78 rpm messages of music, hope and comfort from America's top musicians. Starting in 1943, and for seven years afterward, the United States Armed Forces sent packages of V-Disc records to ships and bases to all war locations.

It was Army Lt. George Robert Vincent who first got the idea for V-Discs. He worked in Thomas Edison's phonograph laboratories before the war. In 1943, Vincent asked his supervisor if he could put together a special recording project to provide current music to the troops. He eventually received a $1 million startup budget from the U.S. Army and undertook his new military career as head of the V-Disc  program.

At the same time, the American music industry was in turmoil. When Japan attacked French Indochina, the record companies lost their source of imported shellac. And even if they could manufacture records with recycled shellac, the musicians, themselves, had gone on strike against the major record companies.

Vincent's V-Disc staff first had to find a substitute for shellac. Eventually they discovered that vinylite, a Union Carbide polymer, not only could be pressed into records with minimal surface noise, but also the finished product resisted breakage, cracks and fractures. Once they resolved the record material problem, they convinced the American Federation of Musicians and their leader, James Caesar Petrillo, to perform for V-Discs as volunteers, offering their services gratis to the military wanted to hear new songs and recording artists and that all V-Discs would be destroyed after the War.

V-Discs enabled servicemen to hear new and special releases from the top bands of the day. The program provided a variety of music, including big band hits, swing music, classical performances from the best symphonies, a little jazz thrown in for good measure. There were even selections of stirring music from military bands.

Every month, The RCA Victor record factory in Camden, New Jersey, sent a V-Disc kit of 30 records to ports of call and bases around the European and Pacific bases of operations. Each kit, included not only the V-Discs, but an assortment of. steel phonograph needles, a set of lyric sheets, and a questionnaire for soldiers to fill out and return, asking what they liked best, what they liked least, and what they wanted to hear in the future.

During the first week of the V-Disc project, RCA shipped 1,780 boxes of V-Discs to the troops. Within a year, production of the V-Discs had tripled, to supply members of each branch of the military. Even the Office of War Information and Office of Inter-American Affairs wanted V-Discs to use as propaganda materials broadcast to Latin American and European countries, a counterbalance to Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose.

But V-Discs had a very special feature—spoken-word introductions by the artists. Before beginning a song, artists would take a few moments to identify themselves, acknowledge the soldiers, give them a few kind words or inspirational thoughts, kind wish them a safe and speedy return home. "Hiya, men," said Frank Sinatra as he introduced his version of ‘That Old Black Magic.’” "I hope you like these tunes that I've chosen to do for you on these very wonderful V-Discs. And I hope you get as much of a kick out of hearing them as I do out of singing them for you." Other artists added their own special touches to their V-Discs.

Other sources of material for V-Discs came from radio networks, who sent their live feeds to V-Disc headquarters in New York—the AFM strike didn’t affect live performances. Artists gathered at several V-Disc recording sessions in theaters around New York and Los Angeles, including CBS Playhouse No. 3, now the Ed Sullivan Theater, NBC Studio 8H, the home of Saturday Night Live, and CBS Playhouse No. 4, reborn in the 1970s as the infamous Studio 54 disco.

One of the conditions under which AFM musicians would record V-Discs was that the records couldn’t be reproduced or resold, and that the discs had to be destroyed after the V-Disc program ended. After the program ended in 1949, the armed forces honored their request by destroying original masters and record stampers and by discarding V-Discs left behind at bases and on ships. The FBI and the Provost Marshal's Office also confiscated and destroyed V-Discs that servicemen had smuggled home. An employee at a Los Angeles record company spent time in prison for his illegal possession of more than 2,500 V-Discs. 

Today, music-lovers and World War II memorabilia collectors covet V-Discs. Near-mint copies of  V-Discs are hard to find, and most copies would be graded "good" to "fair" condition due to surface scuffs and 60 years of storage. Common titles sell for $5-10, while name artists such as Frank Sinatra or Arturo Toscanini can command $25-40`for their V-Discs, depending on condition and rarity of title. A V-Disc containing the classic Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" comedy routine, backed with a version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame as played by baseball organist- Gladys Gooding, is worth up to $75 in near-mint condition: Unopened packages of V-Disc needles sell for $5-10, and a spring-wound V-Disc phonograph can run from $250-340 in working condition.

So you see, it seems your grandfather smuggled the V-Discs you found and kept them all these years as a remembrance of his time in the War. They worth far more in sentimental value—real treasures of times past.