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- Editor’s
Note:
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- This
column is a regular feature in the Wayback Times in which my
husband takes interesting people out to lunch … and sends
me the bill.
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- (It's
a tough job, but someone has to do it!)
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- Send
us an e-mail if you have someone in mind for one of Peter Neilly's
interviews over lunch.
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- Peter Neilly is Out
to Lunch
- Breaking bread with
interesting people
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- Out to Lunch!
with Peter Neilly
- Today's Out To Lunch guest is
Cal Earle, better known to music aficionados and audiophiles
as Jukebox Cal. Cal has been buying, fixing, rebuilding and selling
jukeboxes for almost 40 years. A visit to Cal's home starts with
a good old down east warm welcome followed by some good old classic
rock and roll blasted out of one of his many vintage jukeboxes.
The music has never sounded better. Cal has chosen Dougalls On
The Bay, a waterfront restaurant in Brighton, Ontario, for our
lunch. The bay is frozen over and it's -12C outside, so we won't
be dinning on the lakeside patio.
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- Peter: It's obvious you have a great love of oldies
music and a passion for jukeboxes; what got you started in this
business?
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- Cal: I think it all started because of my dad back
in Newfoundland when I was a teenager. He would build houses
from the ground up all on his own, from the brickwork to the
plumbing to the electrical, even the painting. When he walked
out of a house with his toolbox the people could move in. He
was a jack-of-all-trades and I learned a lot by watching and
helping him. He gave me the confidence to try almost anything.
Back in the late ‘50s and ‘60s in Newfoundland there
were jukeboxes in almost every restaurant and kids' hangouts.
I remember being in one of those restaurants and being asked
by the owner, who knew that I was sort of handy, if I could fix
his jukebox. Being only 16, I figured to myself that it was already
broken so I couldn't make it any worse. “Sure I can fix
it,” I said, not having a clue what I was doing. Anyway,
I was able to fix it and he gave me $10 and in 1957, $10 was
a lot of money. That got me started. After that I started taking
correspondence courses so I wouldn't have to bluff my way through
any more jobs.
Peter: When did you move to Ontario?
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- Cal: I came here in 1961 and I've been working on
jukeboxes ever since. I've had other jobs. I drove transports,
a cement truck and even had my own chip truck business, but my
roots were always in electronics. I had an electronic repair
shop in downtown Toronto where I would fix televisions, radios,
and turntables but when Wal-Mart started selling colour TVs for
$150, people just stopped getting things
repaired. It was cheaper just to buy a new one. You can buy DVD
players for thirty bucks now.
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- Peter: Do you have a favourite make? I know you gave
a Wurlitzer “One More Time”
classic bubbler model to your wife Nadine for her birthday last
year.
- Cal: I like them all but I think maybe the “Rock-Ola”
because its one of the easiest to work on. I can almost tear
one of those apart and fix it with my eyes closed. But the
Seeburg and the Wurlitzer are good makes, too. The MSN machine
is a good sounding juke as well.
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- Peter: What is the most expensive machine you've worked
on, and are the replacement parts hard to come by for these older
machines?
Cal: I once worked on a Wurlitzer Peacock that a man bought
on eBay and had shipped up from Florida. I think it cost over
$1,400 just to have it shipped here and
by the time it was in his house, it had topped out at around
$26,000. Parts are still available for most of the jukes, but
they mostly come from the U.S. Jukeboxes
are getting harder to find now. I hate to think of all the machines
that got tossed out or taken to the dump years ago just because
they stopped working.
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- Peter: What is it about jukeboxes that have made them
so popular recently?
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- Cal: The music sounds great coming from a juke, but
it's more than that.You can spend thirty thousand dollars on
a high-end stereo system, put it in your living room and no one
will ever ask you to turn it on. Put a jukebox in that same room
and I guarantee you that when family or friends come by the first
thing they will ask you is to play a song. Many people will even
start to dance. It happens all the time. They're just fun to
have.
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- Peter: I enjoy when people come to our house because
it costs them a quarter to play mine. And you're right, the old
45s in it make people want to dance. I really enjoy my jukebox.
What’s your favourite type of music that you listen to on
your machines?
Cal: I love the old stuff like classic country and old
rock and roll. Stuff like Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Ricky
Nelson, The Everly Brothers and Elvis. When I was a kid back
home I popped a lot of nickels into those old jukes just to listen
to those songs. Machines made from 1942 to 1949 would take nickels
for one play, a dime for two, and you would get three plays for
a quarter. Years ago, they had a Newfoundland nickel that was
a little smaller than a regular dime and if you put it in the
dime slot on a jukebox you would get two plays for a nickel.
The local store owners who had jukeboxes on site would always
give us change in pennies because they knew what we would use
the nickels for.
Peter: You don't just fix jukeboxes, you restore them
completely, right?
Cal: I take them apart bit by bit, clean the cabinets
and start the rebuilding and
replacing process. When I'm finished they look and sound like
new. I don't do patch-up jobs. I make sure they work properly
and look like they should. Some of these machines with their
deco-style cabinets, bubble tubes and rotating lights are really
works of art. I can set them up so they will play records for
free or by inserting a coin like yours. Some people like to use
them as a musical piggy bank. Jukeboxes now can be converted
to play CDs.
Peter: Thanks for meeting with me for lunch, Cal. The
food was excellent and the company even better. As usual Sandy
(The Warden) gets the bill. Maybe I'll
bring her here for lunch one day next summer when it's about
30 degrees warmer.
Jukebox Cal lives in Brighton Ontario and can be reached at 613
475-6155. He buys, sells, repairs and restores all makes of jukeboxes.
He has built a great reputation for himself based on honesty
and hard work. He loves what he does.
- Cal Earle, aka “Jukebox
Cal,” standing beside the jukebox he gave his wife Nadine
- a Wurlitzer “One More Time" model. Photo Courtesy
of the (Brighton) Independent
- Out to Lunch Archives:
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