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Home , Cindy Walker, Del Reeves, Floyd Tillman, Hank Thompson (musician), Johnnie Wright, Johnny Bond

Wynn Stewart

Producers: Various Re-Issue Producer: Hank Davis, Scott Parker, Roy Forbes Disc Transfer: Various Mastering: Marc Vich Liner Notes: Hank Davis Photos: ...and more bears archive Artwork: Sven T. Uhrmann / Retrograph Thanks To: L-P Anderson, Kevin Coffey

2 A Lot Of Heartaches For A Dime 1. Wynn Stewart A Lot Of Heartaches For A Dime () 1960 2. George Jones Don’t Stop The Music (George Jones) 1956 3. Wiley Barkdull Mr. Juke Box () 1955 4. The Beaver Valley Sweethearts Juke Box Diner (James Leyden-Charles Grean) 1952 5. Wild Side Of Life (Arlie A. Carter) 1951 6. It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Angels (J. D. Miller) 1952 7. Big Jeff Bess Juke Box Boogie (Bess-Wood) 1950 8. That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play (Jimmy Work) 1954 9. Wilma Lee & Don’t Play Number Ten (On The Jukebox Tonight) (C. Coben-E. Arnold-C. Grean) 1953 10. Don Deal A 11 (Original) (Hank Cochran) 1963 11. Hillbilly Fever (George Vaughn) 1950 12. Dick Curless Juke Box Man (Mills) 1970 13. Honky Tonk Gal () 1955 14. Who Stole The Juke Box () 1973 15. Billy Brown He’ll Have To Go (J. & A. Allison) 1959

3 Lattie Moore

Claude Casey

Jesse Rogers

4 16 Lattie Moore The Jukebox And The Phone (-) 1959 17. Jesse Rogers Juke Box Cannonball (Rodgers-Keefer-Barrie) 1952 18. Buzz Busby Just Me And The Juke Box (Busbice) 1956 19. Put A Nickel In The Juke Bo (S. Bratcher) 1959 20. Kitty Wells I Heard The Jukebox Playing (-Kitty Wells-Linda Bagget) 1952 21. June Carter (-) 1953 22. The Record Goes Round And Round (Floyd Tillman) 1957 23. Warm Red Wine () 1949 24. Don’t Play That Song (Cy Coben-Charles Grean-) 1953 25. The Record (Cindy Walker) 1955 26. Charlie Walker Gonna Buy Me A Jukebox (Glenn Sutton) 1965 27. Wally & Don Just Play The Jukebox (William R. Cannon) 1961 28. Claude Casey Jukebox Gal (Claude Casey) 1948 29. Carl Perkins Let The Jukebox Keep On Playing (Carl Perkins) 1955 30. Warren Smith Rock ‘n Roll Ruby () 1955

5 Hardrock Gunter

Freddie Burns

Jerry Lee Lewis

6 Drop Some Silver In The Jukebox

1. Dick Curless Drop Some Silver In The Jukebox (Don Choate) 1960 2. Nickels, Quarters And Dimes (Bill Anderson-Jimmy Gateley) 1962 3. I Heard The Jukebox Playing (Webb Pierce- Linda Bagget) 1951 4. Tommy Hill Mr. Jukebox (Miller-Hill-Miller) 1956 5. Freddie Burns Juke Box Boogie (Williams) 1950 6. That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play (Jimmy Work) 1955 7. Swinging Doors () 1962 8. A Dime At A Time (J. Chestnut-D, Bruce) 1962 9. Ray Chaney That Old Juke Box (Howard Hausey) 1960 10. Ramblin’ Jimmie Dolan Juke Box Boogie (Tex Crotty) 1951 Anita Carter 11. Bonnie Love By The Jukebox Light (Ned Miller-Marguerite Johnson) 1957 12. Hardrock Gunter Jukebox Shuffle (-) 1956 13. Honky Tonk Man (Johnny Horton-Tillman Franks-Howard Hausey) 1956

7 Vernon Oxford

Pee Wee King

Tommy Scott

Luke Wills Hank Thompson

Dave Stogner 8 14. George Jones You’re Still On My Mind (Luke McDaniel) 1960 15. Juke Box Blues () 1948 16. John D. Loudermilk Please Don’t Play Number Nine (John D. Loudermilk-Marijohn Wilkin) 1959 17. One Hundred Songs On The Jukebox (Hugh X. Lewis-Glenn Sutton) 1962 18. Lattie Moore Juke Joint Johnny (Moore) 1956 19. George Morgan Lonesome Record (George Morgan) 1955 20. Vernon Oxford (Paul Craft) 1962 21. Dave Stogner Juke Box Love (Essey-Stogner) 1951 22. Jimmy Swan Juke Joint Mama (Jimmy Swan) 1952 23. Hank Thompson New Records On The Jukebox (Hank Thompson-William Penix) 1962 24. Luke Wills vcl. Johnny Tyler A Nickel In The Jukebox (Billy Hughes) 1948 25. Tommy Scott Juke Joint Girl (Tommy Scott) 1955 26. Hank Davis Hello Juke Box (Hank Davis) 2021

9 Looking at American social customs and the history of recorded music, it seems inevitable that jukeboxes would be invented and become wildly popular, although they weren’t exactly an over- night success. There were coin-operated record players as early as 1918, during the earliest days of sound recording. But they never caught on.

A patent for a coin-operated phonograph was registered in 1898 by the Edison Company. It cost a nickel to play a record. Surprisingly, the cost for a single play didn’t change over the next 50 years. What did change is the fact that earliest models of coin-operated record players only con- Beaver Valley Sweethearts tained one selection. If you liked it, you played it. If you didn’t, there were plenty of other ways for you to spend your nickel. In 1928, Seeburg patented a device allowing the customer to se- lect which of eight different records to play. It was an inefficient system, requiring eight sepa- rate turntables, each of which held its own record. Not surprisingly, its commercial appli- cations were limited. A year earlier AMI had adapted their player piano device to play both sides of ten 78s, allowing the customer twenty selections. The results, manufactured during the 1930s, don’t seem to have caught on either and it really wasn’t until the emergence of 45 rpm records that two-sided play became an industry standard. John D. Loudermilk

10 The idea of a jukebox always made good sense. When people got together to drink, dance, and let their hair down, music was a perfect addition. As a club owner, you only had two options. One was to bring in live musicians. But bringing in small combos to wail or honk their way through a few sets each night was going to take a cut out of your profits, and you also had to deal with the aggrava- tions of hiring live musicians, no matter how good they sounded.

On the other hand, things were a lot simpler when all you had to do was drag in a large record player on wheels. It never got drunk or called in sick at the last minute. It knew all the top tunes. It Hawkshaw Hawkins never missed a set or left early because the bass player had a sick kid at home. Better yet, it didn’t stand around waiting to get paid, demanding full salary on a slow night. Best yet, depending on the deal you made with the local operator, you got to keep a portion of every nickel and quarter that got dropped into the slot.

The Jukebox field was dominated by four manu- facturers: Seeburg, AMI, Wurlitzer, and Rock-ola. Most people are surprised to learn that the Rock- ola brand had nothing to do with the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll, but is instead named for company founder, David Rockola.

Kitty Wells

11 Once jukeboxes became well established in the late 1930s and early ’40s, customers expected to find them everywhere, both in rural and urban establishments. For example, Wurlitzer reported shortages and could barely keep up with the de- mand. On top of that, a good jukebox operator had to keep his locations supplied with records. Operators had to keep up with all the hits, and had to replace worn out records almost on a weekly basis.

Musicians unions had to adjust their thinking. They initially feared that jukeboxes threatened the livelihood of working musicians, but they grew to see the error in their thinking. Plainly, Wiley Barkdull every joint that had a jukebox would not have otherwise hired union musicians. Unions also feared phonograph records and radio station plays for the same reason and banned recording sessions for a while in the 1940s. Records, they believed, were the enemy of live music, and live music was the livelihood of working musicians.

Jukeboxes did what they could to attract at- tention. Their styling rapidly progressed from the plain wooden boxes of the early 1930s to beauti- ful light shows with marbleized plastic and color animation in 1940 and 1941. Unfortunately, that was as far as it got. The Jukebox business was nearly overcome by an enemy no one could have Del Reeves predicted just two or three years earlier. World

12 War II swamped everything. Its needs took prec- edence over the casual entertainment of Americans who lived on the home front. The construction of jukeboxes required metal and glass. Unfortunately, so did fighter planes and munitions, so there was a standstill in the jukebox world during the early 1940s. Jukeboxes were considered “nonessential”, and none were produced until 1946. The 1942 Wurlitzer 950 featured wooden coin chutes to save on metal. At the end of the war, in 1946, jukebox production resumed and several “new” companies joined the fray. Jukeboxes started to offer visual attractions: bubbles, waves, and circles of chang- ing color which came on when a sound was played. Faron Young Like many things in American culture, there was an almost immediate rebound in jukebox revenue following World War II. The decade beginning in 1946 represents the golden era in jukebox culture. There were three separate markets for jukeboxes and each had its own demographic. White rural America was serviced by music taken from the hill- billy best-seller lists. Black populations, both ur- ban and rural, received their records from the R&B or “sepia” charts. More urban settings typically pro- vided records from the pop charts. This demographic shifted in the early to mid- as rock ‘n’ roll asserted itself as a mainstream demographic that you ignored at your own peril. It impacted both the blues and hillbilly locations as well. Carl Perkins

13 A massive change occurred in 1950, when the Seeburg Corporation introduced a jukebox that played 45 rpm vinyl records. Since the 45s were smaller and lighter, they soon became the domi- nant jukebox medium for the remaining years of the 20th century. In fact, the short-lived era of stereo singles (1959 – 1962) originated with a demand from jukebox operators to provide prod- uct for their stereo-capable machines. For a brief while consumers were intrigued by this novel product as well but by the mid-‘60s the novelty had worn off.

One thing you could say about music on a jukebox during the second half of the 20th cen- Billy Walker tury. It sounded good. In fact, it usually sounded much better than anything you could hear at home or on your car radio. The jukebox’s history fol- lowed the wave of technological improvements in music reproduction. With its large speaker size, facilitating low-frequency reproduction, and large amplifier, the jukebox played sound with higher quality and volume than the listener could at home. That too was part of the jukebox’s ap- peal.

Jukeboxes were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-, particularly during the 1950s. By the middle of the 1940s, three-quar- ters of the records produced in America went into Buzz Busby jukeboxes. Billboard magazine published a meas-

14 uring jukebox play during the 1950s, which briefly became a component of the Hot 100. However, by 1959, the jukebox’s popularity had waned to the point where Billboard ceased publishing the chart and stopped collecting jukebox play data.

The naming of jukeboxes, or for that matter juke/ jook joints, got its start in African American cul- ture and was quickly exported to the rest of Ameri- can life. Places where African Americans relaxed, enjoyed themselves, drank, danced, and listened to music, were called “Juke joints.” The word “jook” or “joog” comes from the Gullah language (a form Don Deal of Creole English with origins in West Africa) and means “rowdy” or “disorderly.” It was an obvious next step to call the large music boxes that were located in Juke joints “jukeboxes.” By the mid- 1940s when automated coin-operated record play- ers began to displace live music, the devices were simply referred to as “jukeboxes”. It was more con- venient and lucrative to allow the patrons to pro- gram their own music. That has always been the democratic appeal of a jukebox. If somebody had enough coins in their pocket, they could impose their taste on a captive audience. If you didn’t like someone’s taste, the jukebox would honor your se- lections as readily as somebody else’s. As long as you had money to spend, you could dictate what everyone in the joint listened and danced to. Johnny Horton

15 Once the terms “jukebox” and “juke joint” caught on, they crossed cultural lines and applied as readily to hillbilly bars and teenage hangouts. A jukebox was a jukebox, whether you were an urban teenager, a black maid, or a white shift worker in the local factory. Music, and the tech- nology used to play it, were the great equalizers.

It didn’t take long for musicians and songwrit- ers to turn their attention to the Jukebox itself. Our focus here is on hillbilly music about Juke- Jimmie Dolan boxes. One thing is very clear, at least if these songs are any indication. In the world of rock ‘n’ roll and R&B, the Jukebox is a source of rhyth- mic entertainment. It’s music that was meant to be danced to. You play the Jukebox so you can get out on the floor and dance.

Not so much in hillbilly culture. The Jukebox and its music are often thought of as a source of pain. If somebody plays the jukebox while you’re sitting by yourself drinking beer, there’s a good chance that song will remind you of your lost love. Maybe it was the song that the two of you used to dance to; maybe the lyrics remind you of her. But one way or the other, it’s likely you’ll end up crying in your beer as the jukebox plays.

Just look at some of these selections, drawn from four different decades of : the 1940s through the 1970s. Wilma Lee and Stoney Dick Curless

16 Cooper tell us not to play number 10 on the juke- box. For Don Deal, we’re told to stay clear of A-11. John D Loudermilk asks us not to play Number 9. Porter Wagoner simply asks us not to play that song. Anita Carter and Jimmy Work both tell us that nick- els may feed the machine, but pain is the real cur- rency. In their words “so many disappointments” are what make the jukebox play.

Many of these songs simply describe life in the Juke Joint. In one of the most upbeat descriptions you’ll ever hear of a Juke Joint, the Beaver Valley Sweethearts (who sound uncannily like Sun’s Miller Sisters) sing about the joys of life in a Juke Box Diner. But in most songs, the picture is a little darker. Ernest Tubb In The Jukebox and the Phone, Lattie Moore de- scribes the conflict he faces trying to decide be- tween staying in the juke joint or going home to his wife. Johnny Horton has given into it. He’s simply become a Honky Tonk Man. The best he can hope for is that at the end of a long night when he calls his wife, she’ll allow him to come home. Jerry Lee Lewis, reprises the Merle Haggard 1960s hit Swing- ing Doors, in which he’s no longer in conflict. He’s just moved into the Juke Joint. As he says, “my new home has a flashing neon sign.” The equally ex- treme other side of that message is Charlie Walk- er’s Gonna Buy Me a Jukebox. Charlie figures if he turns his home into a juke joint, maybe then his wife will come back to him. Porter Wagoner

17 If men reluctantly acknowledged their own at- traction to the honky tonk life, there was no short- age of judgments about the women who can be found there. Tommy Scott sings about the sad fate of a Juke Joint Girl and so does Claude Casey on Juke Box Gal. From Carl Perkins’ first recording session at Sun, we find Honky Tonk Gal, a 1954 lament to a woman gone wrong. Carl performs with early rhythm but he knows she’s a lost cause. On Juke Joint Mama, Jimmy Swan also complains, although in Swan’s case the la- dy’s infidelity seems confined to the dance floor. Freddie Burns complains about the same kind of wild woman on the dance floor but, in truth, neither guy has much to gripe about. It’s better to have his mama acting out on the dance floor Little Jimmy Dickens than out in the parking lot in somebody’s Chevy pick-up.

When Hank Thompson made his searing in- dictment of in his classic 1951 hit Wild Side of Life, Kitty Wells decided not to take that sexist abuse lying down. Her 1952 an- swer record, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels struck an early blow for feminism and placed some of the blame squarely on men’s shoulders. Undoubtedly, this country music de- bate sparked some interesting conversations in juke joints all over America back in the early ’50s. It didn’t hurt Kitty’s career as an emerging coun- Johnny Bond try superstar either.

18 The opening lines to Hank Cochran song A 11 (presented here in its original release by Don Deal) represent a recurring theme in jukebox songs. “I don’t know you from Adam / but if you’re going to play the Jukebox / please don’t play A11.” You’ll hear the idea expressed in different ways but it comes down to the simple fact that “there’s pain for me on that jukebox but as long as I can stay away from it, I can sit here drinking to forget my sorrow.” You’ll hear it in George Morgan’s song Lonesome Record. Not to mention Ernest Tubb’s Warm Red Wine and George Jones’ You’re Still On My Mind, as well as his Cajun-inflected Don’t Stop the Music. Once in a while one of these singers ac- tually encourages you to spend a nickel so he can wallow in his sorrow rather than avoid it. Hawkshaw Hawkins’ Put a Nickel in the Jukebox is a fine ex- Billy Brown ample of such juke joint masochism.

The word Blues doesn’t usually turn up in coun- try song titles about Jukeboxes, although it does show up three times here. You’ll hear it in Pee Wee King’s 1948 track called Jukebox Blues, as well as the June Carter track with the same title (but a very different song). Carter’s song is also unusual in the fact that she doesn’t want the Jukebox to help her wallow in self pity. She wants that music so she can get out on the floor and dance away her blues. This alone makes her contribution from 1953 a rather unusual hillbilly jukebox record. The third example of a jukebox song with the word “Blues” in the title is my own demo from the late ’60s/early 1970s called Hello Jukebox Johnny Tylor

19 (I’m Going to Play Me Some Blues). It’s another case of the singer feeling bad and wanting the music from the Jukebox to match his dark mood.

Assuming you don’t believe that old joke “all generalizations are bad,” let’s conclude with two of our own. 1- Country musicians write and sing about jukeboxes far more than their counterparts do in pop, rock ‘n’roll and blues/ R&B. And 2 - Jukebox songs in country music tend to be songs about pain and loss, whereas jukebox songs in R&B, pop and rock ‘n’roll tend to be happy songs about dancing. Both of those generalizations may have to do with the fact that there are more ways to write songs about pain and loss than there are Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper about your baby boppin’ on the dance floor with a smile on her face. If you want another gener- alization, try this: Everybody knows about pain and loss and hurting. But from this sample, it seems like most hillbillies would rather cry in their beer about it, whereas kids and black folks would rather dance.

Hank Davis

[With special thanks to Scott Parker, Dave Samuelson and Roy Forbes.]

Hank Davis

20 Johnny Wright

Charlie Walker

Jimmy Work Floyd Tillman

21 Tommy Hill Bonnie Guitar

George Morgan

Bob Luman

Jimmy Swan June Carter