Feature: Collector David Webb and his vintage jukeboxes

Published: 26 August 2010
by SIMON WROE

COLEBROOKE Row is a street of prim Georgian terraces behind the Angel that overlooks a small square. It’s about as far from rock ’n’ roll as you can get. 

Or at least it was until David Webb fell in love with jukeboxes.

Fifteen years after he began collecting “multi selector phonographs” from all over the world, Mr Webb’s neighbours seem to have accepted the sounds of Gene ­Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula shattering the peace at dancehall decibels. 

Mr Webb and his wife, on their part, have accepted they no longer have a living room.

Around 30 jukeboxes reside in their home at any time, many with names such as The Mother of Plastic, The Trashcan, The Tona-Lier (it was designed to hang from the ceiling like a chandelier) and The Teardrop. Some of them are nearly 80 years old, which makes them noisy antiques.

Although the jukebox is primarily associated with dancing (“jook” is American slang for “dance”), Mr Webb, 63, likes to tell visitors and prospective traders about the seamier side of the instrument, particularly its connections to war and organised crime.

“The mob helped    the industry to take off,” he claims. “Illegal speakeasies of the Prohibition Era loved them because they provided cheap entertainment. When Prohibition ended, a lot of jukeboxes were run by gangsters because they wanted things to continue to make money – and these machines were made to make ­money.”

By the 1940s, the Wurlitzer Company was so huge that its factories had “trees going in one end and boxes coming out the other”. They made everything on site, down to the nuts and bolts. That expertise was invaluable for the war effort, says Mr Webb, when jukebox factories were turned over to the manufacture of artillery.

Like all good romances, Mr Webb’s infatuation started by accident.

“I used to buy and sell other kinds of antiques for people,” he says. “One day, a client said he wanted the best jukebox money could buy. So I got it for him, but he didn’t turn up.” 

Mr Webb hung on to the jukebox – a Wurlitzer 2000 from 1956 – playing with it and becoming intrigued by the medium. Each model is unique, he says, with its own ­aesthetic, technology  and sound.

“You’re taken aback more easily by juke­boxes,” he says. 

“They play the vinyl  in a way that reminds me of the way I used to hear records when I was a young boy. But it’s a combination of all sorts of things. There’s the visual and social element too.”

In order to keep the operators buying their machines, the four big producers – Rock-Ola, AMI, Wurlitzer and Seeburg – brought out a different model every year.

The Wurlitzer 1015 was the biggest selling model in history, producing more than 56,246 boxes during its 1946 run. Despite these numbers it is not always so easy to get hold of the originals. Wurlitzer smashed the old ones so they wouldn’t be introduced into the second-hand market, and termites have a sweet tooth for the wooden cabinets.

Only the last Wurlitzer escapes this fate, because the company made it from plastic instead of wood to save money as it slid into bankruptcy. It wasn’t enough. The ­original Wurlitzer went bust in 1973. 

“Jukeboxes made the most money from about 1928, when they first had amplified sound, until about 1962. Then they became unfashionable,” says Mr Webb. 

“People did other things. They could afford to buy record players. There were more TVs.”

He presses a button on the dashboard of one of the machines and the pilasters begin to glow and change colour, the enormous Ferris Wheel of records spins until the arm selects a disc, the needle hiccups, the speaker crackles with promise and music bursts forth into the quiet Islington street.

• You can browse Mr Webb’s jukebox collection by appointment on 020 7713 7668.