The passing of the American singer and songwriter Johnny Nash last week no doubt evoked bittersweet memories of another era for the older generation of Guyanese.
As the local radio stations paid tribute to Nash, spinning his enduringly popular “I Can See Clearly Now,” which hit number one for four weeks on the 1972 Billboard Hot 100 Charts, and his other hits, the current generation of thirty and under, would have noticed the smiles emerging on the faces of their parents. Accompanying these nostalgic responses was the standard phrase, “Jukebox song, definitely, a jukebox song.”
A throwback from another time, for sure, the name Johnny Nash seemed synonymous with reggae and the jukebox. Oh! What past memories!! Nash, who lived in Jamaica for a while in the mid-to-late 1960s, played a key role in introducing the reggae sound to audiences in the USA and the UK. It was Nash who initially signed a young Jamaican Rastafarian, Bob Marley, as a songwriter for his own label, JAD, jointly owned with his manager, Danny Sims. Marley’s compositions, “Stir it up,” “Guava Jelly,” “Comma, Comma,” and “You Poured Sugar On Me” (jointly written with Nash) appeared on Nash’s 1972 album, ‘I Can See Clearly Now’.
Reggae has since evolved into a definitive genre of music, and now Nash has departed. Meanwhile, the jukebox has vanished from the Guyanese cultural landscape, disappearing long before the curtains were drawn at the last stand-alone cinema in Georgetown, the Astor (SN editorial, The curtains fall, 2nd August 2017). On a visit to any corner shop, parlour, or beer garden, in the city or the countryside, one was sure to find a jukebox, regardless of how small the entity was. In some instances, there was not enough space for tables and chairs for the patrons, but there always seemed to be a Wurlitzer jukebox squeezed into a corner.
A post-World War II phenomenon, the jukebox was a staple of Guyanese culture from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. For those who were not fortunate to experience this marvel, the jukebox was a coin-operated, musical device which allowed patrons to select the songs of their choice. These glitzy machines, which often occupied a prominent spot in the business entity, were manufactured in bright colours and attractively finished with shiny trim. The machine featured a well-lit listing of the available songs which were chosen by selecting the code printed next to the song title. This code comprised a letter and a number, such as G 10, which could be activated by pressing the oversize buttons imprinted with the corresponding letters and numbers.
Jukeboxes were stacked with 45s, seven-inch vinyl records, with the more popular versions holding fifty or one hundred records, thus providing one hundred or two hundred selections, respectively. Most jukeboxes were programmed to accept, five cent, ten cent and twenty-five cent (quarters or ‘bobs’) coins, which allowed patrons to listen to one, two or five selections, respectively. These jukeboxes were more often owned by an entrepreneur who rented the machine to the shop proprietor for a flat fee, and, or a percentage of the patronage. A ready supply of the latest hits was an essential requirement for attracting a regular clientele who would pass the time imbibing whilst enjoying the hit songs.
One quirk of the jukebox phenomenon was that the selections available in any jukebox were entirely unique to that particular location, and provided a true reflection of the neighbourhood’s, or the regular patronage’s musical preferences. As one drifted away from Georgetown, Bollywood title tracks, and songs of the country and western genre tended to dominate the available selections in the ‘punch box,’ as they were referred to, away from the environs of the city. Apart from the few staples, an Elvis Presley song, a Beatles’ selection or two, the Temptations, and a few Bob Marley hits, which seem to remain forever in some jukeboxes, by and large, most records were replaced within a month or two.
Wherever there were two or three competing rum shops or beer gardens slotted next to each other, the neighbours quite often had to endure two or more jukeboxes blaring simultaneously at each other at top volume, a wholly undesirable spin-off of the Wurlitzer culture. Strangers stopping to quench their thirst found themselves being coerced in a friendly manner to “make sure that you play F7” when they approached the jukebox, and then being warmly congratulated for having done so, once the song came on. Standard in any jukebox was a fair selection of romantic or “typee” songs, which would often be ‘punched’ late in the night by a jilted customer, who by this stage had, had too much to drink. As the turntable needle dipped onto the vinyl record, he would take to the floor alone, beer bottle cradled in hand, and proceed to waltz around the joint, lost in his own world, whilst the songs swarmed his memory of happier moments.
The advancement in the portability of music, namely the development of the cassette tape deck, compact disc (CD) players and walkmans, contributed to the decline in the popularity of the jukebox. Although jukeboxes experienced a revival in the 1990s in North America with the advent of the CD version, and later digital ones utilizing the MP3 format, those models never quite caught on with the local market. No doubt, the unreliable electricity supply would have deterred any businessman from thinking seriously about investing in these new machines.
Today, digitized music is more readily available – we do not have to leave home to access it, but it does not quite replace the thrill of the jukebox. As we reflect on the passing of Johnny Nash and others before him, let us salute all those singers, bands and musicians who provided us with countless hours of listening pleasure and an abundance of happy memories of growing up in the era of the jukebox.
