Summer Reflections

by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com

Roll out those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” and happy August! It’s certainly a happy month for the team at Jersey Jack Pinball as we find ourselves humbled to be on the front and back covers of this issue of RePlay. It’s been a wild year for us with the introduction of our Harry Potter pinball game.

Back to summer, I’ve got Nat King Cole’s record, Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days Of Summer, playing on my Wurlitzer 1015 One More Time jukebox. It holds 50 45-rpm records, and I had been digging through a box of old records looking for a few more summer songs to put in the machine. As I looked through these vinyl discs, I thought back on how jukebox operators used to change music on location every week.

I came into the industry at the tail end of vinyl records. I only operated a couple of jukeboxes over the years. That’s a bit like having two vending machines. Why? Because a jukebox that holds 50 45 records offers up just 100 songs. With regular play, 100 songs don’t go too far, and every week, the release of the latest Billboard Hot 100 meant requests for new records to be swapped into the jukebox. God forbid you showed up at the location without the requested records!

Enter the “One-Stop,” a distribution center for records. Usually located in an industrial area, a one-stop was a big warehouse full of records and title strips (labels for each 45) for jukebox operators. I was telling a friend about this recently. In New York City, 10th Avenue from around West 43rd Street to West 56th Street was known as “coin-op row” or “record row” because of all the one-stops and game distributors there.

Selling 45 records for jukeboxes was some business, and one that’s all but gone today, though vinyl is having a resurgence of sorts. With all the swapping in and out of hits and favorites, you can imagine how operators wound up with hundreds, more like thousands, of “old” 45 records along with their accompanying jukebox title strips. Oh, if only we had eBay in those days! A search for 45s on eBay today yields 2,800,000+ results, with lots of 50 random 45s selling for $15 or less.

During my jukebox operating days, my one-stop was Don Liberatore of Don Records in Long Island, N.Y. He was a great guy who passed recently. I would call him and say, “Send me three orders of the top 10,” which was just enough not to be a nuisance. He was always so nice. Even with my limited jukebox operation, I had hundreds of 45s, and I still have boxes of them to give away today.

Imagine a thriving one-stop business that employed thousands of people across the U.S., and then one day it’s all gone. Change happens whether you like it or not. Technology and innovation are constantly moving forward…with you or without you. The pinball industry could have suffered the same fate as the record one-stop, but instead, it’s followed a similar evolution as the jukebox business.

Over time, the 45 rpm models, like the ones I operated, gave way to CD jukeboxes that offered from 50 to 100 CDs with hundreds of songs. Then came downloading digital jukes that can hold 30,000 to 40,000 songs on a hard drive and thousands more streamed. Today’s jukebox is essentially a computer, amp, speakers and a way to accept payment, often through a mobile app.

The pinball industry has transformed, too. In 2011, I saw a need for innovation and new technology and founded Jersey Jack Pinball. That spurred competition and also helped people discover pinball for the first time, including women and younger players.

And to bring the discussion of music full circle, the pin games we build at Jersey Jack Pinball sport an onboard equalizer and aftermarket, room-shaking, glass-vibrating bass from a Klipsch 800-watt subwoofer. That sure sounds good to me (though we haven’t designed a game that plays Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days Of Summer…at least not yet)!

Jack Guarnieri started servicing electromechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].