The Sweet Sound of Success : Collector Has Turned Hobby of Restoring Jukeboxes Into Business That’s Turning a Profit

Glenn Streeter is one of those fortunate souls who has managed to turn what he loves into a profitable business.

What Streeter loves is jukeboxes.

“There’s just something about jukeboxes,” said Streeter, 48, president of a Torrance company called Antique Apparatus, which manufacturers reproductions of classic 1940s-era jukeboxes--the only U.S. company that does so. “I love the designs and the craftsmanship that went into them. I love the mechanics of them too, the way they work. I just love jukeboxes.”

In addition to building jukebox reproductions, Streeter’s company recently bought the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Co. of Chicago, one of the most famous names in jukebox-dom, and has begun manufacturing modern-style Rock-Ola jukeboxes at its Torrance plant for the commercial jukebox market.

The word jukebox reportedly came from an old African-American slang term, juke , meaning to dance. Although the jukebox was invented more than a century ago, its heyday came in the late 1930s and 1940s, the so-called golden age of jukeboxes, a time when jukeboxes played 78 r.p.m. records and typically featured wood cabinets with lots of flashing lights, etched glass panels and brightly colored lighted tubes made from celluloid.

Hundreds of thousands of jukeboxes were manufactured during this period by such companies as Wurlitzer, Rock-Ola and Seeburg, and sold to bars, dance halls and malt shops across the country and throughout the world. In the United States, most charged a nickel a song, seven songs for a quarter.

“The beauty of the jukebox was that, unlike the radio, it let you pick the song you wanted to hear,” Streeter said.

The other period most often associated with jukeboxes, the 1950s, was the chrome age of jukebox history, Streeter says, a time when metal cabinets replaced wood and jukeboxes were set up to play the new 45 r.p.m. records.

Antique Apparatus’ reproduction jukeboxes are of the golden age type, copied from old Wurlitzer brand jukeboxes of the early 1940s, except that the reproductions use modern internal mechanisms that can play either 45 r.p.m. records or CDs--78 r.p.m. records being a little hard to come by these days. The reproductions feature designs by noted furniture designer Paul Fuller, whom Streeter calls the Frank Lloyd Wright of jukeboxes.

Fuller-designed jukeboxes sold for about $800 in the 1940s, Streeter says. The handcrafted reproductions of those jukeboxes range in price from about $5,000 to up to $9,000.

Streeter got into the jukebox building business almost by accident. In the late 1970s, the former oil company executive was involved in the business of trading and selling antique radios when he and some friends heard about a 42-piece collection of old jukeboxes that was for sale in Colorado. They drove to Denver, bought the collection and hauled it back to California, where Streeter began restoring some of the machines.

“It was just a hobby thing, strictly on the side,” Streeter said. But as hobbies are sometimes wont to do, it began taking more and more of his attention until finally he began restoring and selling old jukeboxes full time. Later he started making parts for jukebox restorations and selling them to other jukebox collectors. From there it was a short leap to building reproductions of jukeboxes from scratch.

Streeter started small, manufacturing only about one reproduction jukebox every couple of weeks from his shop in the San Fernando Valley. Now his company, which moved to Torrance seven years ago and employs more than 40 people, is making about 150 reproduction jukeboxes a month. Over the years the company has produced about 8,000 reproduction jukeboxes, mostly for home use. Among those who have bought the jukeboxes, according to Streeter, are Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone and Burt Reynolds.

With the purchase of the Rock-Ola Manufacturing Co., which was founded by businessman David Rockola in 1930 and later became one of the premier names in the jukebox business--in some Latin American countries, in fact, jukeboxes are known generically as “Rock-Olas”--Streeter is moving into the commercial jukebox business. He expects to produce about 3,000 contemporary Rock-Ola jukeboxes a year at his 40,000-square-foot plant, making him the third-largest U.S. jukebox manufacturer.

The commercial jukeboxes, which are installed in bars, restaurants, clubs--anyplace people want music--cost about $3,500 or more each, and usually charge 50 cents per play, or three plays for a buck.

Streeter will not divulge how much he paid for the Rock-Ola company. Jukebox pioneer David Rockola--he inserted the hyphen in the company name so that people would pronounce it correctly--died earlier this month at 96.

“I’m glad that (Streeter) bought the Rock-Ola company and not somebody else,” said Frank Schulz, a Rockola company employee since 1949 who works for Streeter. “Because he cares about jukeboxes, just like Mr. Rockola did.”