onceuponatime70s

Juke Box Fury.

Group of six yoiung people crowded around a Jukebox. Possibly late '60s / early '70simage.
Jukebox.

What was your ‘go to’ song for the pub jukebox, back in the ’70s?

Was there a particular record you loved and played so often that it annoyed your friends?

I recall my pals cajoling other young drinkers at the Burnbrae Hotel to put money in the jukebox to prevent my repeated choice of Arthur Conley’s 1967 hit, ‘Sweet Soul Music‘ being played again.

Arthur Conley: ‘Sweet Soul Music’

The other that would really nark my friends was ‘Lady Rose‘ by Mungo Jerry. I played this endlessly on my first ‘lads holiday’ to Majorca in 1977 – so much so that the barman eventually removed / disabled the record from the jukebox.

Mungo Jerry: ‘Lady Rose.’

Perhaps surprisingly, given the number of times I’ve heard these two songs, I still love both and play them regularly.

So what records were worth spending your hard-earned cash on, just for a listen? What tunes did you force down the ears of other pub customers out for a quiet drink? Indeed, what songs did you have to suffer because of people … well, people like me, I guess. 🙂 🙂

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26 comments

  1. Alas, I’m too young to remember that. Can’t recall seeing any jukeboxes in bars when I began to go out to them. But I do recall as a kid a number of restaurants would have have the little ones at each booh, where there were, maybe three singles on a ‘page’ and you could kind of turn the pages like a book to find your song. But I know long before my time, Billboard used to track jukebox plays – I don’t know how they did that.

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    • As a teen in the 70’s our small town had two Italian cafe’s with jukeboxes in and eventually most of the pubs had them too. I guess they went out of fashion but my brother and I had an afternoon in Newcastle last September hitting five pubs that still had them in and working.

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    • We had jukeboxes in pubs right through the ’70s.By mid ’80s I was working in Manchester, England and can remember one in our local pub in the City centre. However, it was a small, wall-mounted one, not the old Wurlitzer type.

      (Interesting – do you mean Billboard monitored the number of plays, like now with streaming, for the chart positions? Or just the sales to the jukebox companies?)

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      • now that’s a good question – I assumed it was the number of plays, but I don’t know how they could tabulate that. But maybe it was indeed,number of jukeboxes that had each single.

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  3. Apparently, Christian and I are the same age. I don’t recall any “pubs” here on the East Coast of the US (in my area) in the 70s and what jukeboxes I have seen didn’t show up until I was a teen/early adult in the 80s. I spent more time at our local youth center, dancing with classmates, with DJs in a booth. We also had a lot of local band talent, too, to dance to.

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      • My old man had a collection of 78s.Big Band stuff like Glenn Miller and Gerry Dorsey, and the crooners, Crosby, Sinatra, Dean Martin etc. They made it through the war in the tender care of my granny while he went to kick the shit out of The Luftwaffe. So 25 years later there is the usual post pub and bingo party on a Saturday night.About 10 couples ,all in various states of inebriation,all smoking !! crammed into our living room,at the top of a four story tenement from where you see almost the entire Clyde Valley. Anyway,the party is in full swing,i’ve already made a few bob by singing requests from the assembled multitude ( usually Irish “folk” songs ), when the old man decides to bring the big box of his treasured collection,to play on the record player recently delivered by Santa. A few moments later one of the ladies ( having had to much Advocaat ) lost her balance while giving it laldy to “In The Mood” As she collapsed ,her rear end came to rest on the box of 78s. Did you know old vinyl records were extraordinarily brittle.? Memory tells me only the strong survived( yes,yes I know ) and more than the usual copious amount of Bells finest brew was required to calm the situation.

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  4. I recall, much later (1984ish) that when Cultural Club had a big hit, a pub where we waited for some ferry had the single in intentionally upside down, so we’d put in the ten p, get the wrong song, try it again, and…they must have made a ton of money that way, maybe two tries for each famous song before the punters, who were on their way out on the ferry anyhow, would complain.

    I spent some coins in the early 70s jukebox at the local Italian restuarant where my mother worked on Wings songs mostly, Three Dog Night, My Dingaling by Chuck Berry–

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  5. A big lover of the jukebox and I missed them when they got unplugged. I don’t recall hearing anything from Mungo Jerry in Canada other than “in the Summertime “ but their sound is unmistakable.

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  6. Fleetwood Mac Green Manalishi in a ‘head’ pub in Brighton for quite a lot of one holiday with my best friend. The first juke box I’d ever come across that had rock and blues. The place was always getting busted. You could smell the reason wafting down the stairs.

    Most music I like gets played to death. Even now.

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