Since the middle of April, vintage and music lovers can spend their free Sunday afternoons marvelling at 110 jukeboxes set up at the former Roussel industrial site. All the jukeboxes were made between 1946 and 1964 and are the property of collector Geert Olieu. You can choose your favourite “oldies” on certain working devices without having to dip in your pockets for coins.
The museum – unique in Belgium – also exhibits about 400 old televisions and radios. The collection is maintained by people from the sheltered workshop ’t Veer in Menen.
“We want to recreate the whole atmosphere of the two decades after the Second World War,” says coordinator Bram Wenes, “when Flemish young people started to drink Coca-Cola, hung posters of Marilyn Monroe over their beds and danced in bars to the rock‘n’roll of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis played on jukeboxes.”
The tour around the museum first explains how the American soldiers during the Second World War brought jukeboxes to Europe for entertainment in the canteens. The colourful and trendy devices soon became a huge hit in Flanders’ nightlife. That fact is illustrated by a scene of teenagers dancing to jukebox tunes in the 1955 Flemish movie Meeuwen sterven in de haven (Seagulls Die in the Harbour).
“Jukeboxes were a miracle of new technology compared to the simple record players of that time,” says Wenes. Because of the fierce competition between the four American brands Wurlitzer, Rock-Ola, Seeburg and AMI, the techniques and design of jukeboxes became ever-more extravagant, until they looked like machines out of a science fiction movie.
AMI, for example, created a jukebox model called “Menus”, with a glass dome shaped like an astronaut’s helmet. But the most iconic jukebox is the Wurlitzer “Bubbler”, introduced in 1946. It is a symbol of post-war optimism with its illuminated, colourchanging pilasters, bubble tubes, shiny chrome and domed top.
Flemish teenagers not only put their spare change in the American jukeboxes but also in Flemish devices made by, amongst others, Barco, the technology group based in Kortrijk that now specialises in projectors and displays. Tonecolor was another Flemish brand, made by a company in Antwerp.
The jukeboxes needed to please the ears and the eyes, but their owners also wanted to make a profit: A Barco from 1957 cost around 42,000 Belgian francs, or more than €1,000. To play one single, you only had to put in a coin of one Belgian franc. Because time is money, wallboxes were put on the tables in bars. Serving as remote controls, the small boxes enabled people to select tunes from their table.
“So-called ‘playboys’ even had the job of asking people which song they wanted to hear, so that the jukebox was almost constantly playing and making money,” says Wenes.
At the end of the tour, you can test your knowledge of the era in a quiz where you have to make out whether a personality, technology or style belonged to the period 1930 to 1950 or the period 1950 to 1970. A photo album further tells the stories of jukeboxes with images from bars or wedding parties.
At a replica of a typical counter from the ’50s in the “Jukebox café”, you can take your own picture. On the walls of this room hang the lists of favourite songs assembled by well-known Flemings such as the blues musician Roland Van Campenhout and comedian Wouter Deprez. But by then, you will without a doubt have your own jukebox list.
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