José Clemente Orozco born / First jukebox - November 23rd Flashback

On this day in 1883, Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco was born.

On this day in 1889, an early forerunner of the modern jukebox was installed for public use at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco, California.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, history fans, We're taking a break so that
we can bring in new episodes all December long. In
the meantime, enjoy these flashback episodes from the TDI HC Vault.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hi everyone, I'm Eves and welcome to This Day in
History Class, a podcast where we dust off a little
piece of history and place it ever so gently on
your brain shelf every day. The day was November twenty third,
eighteen eighty three. Jose Clemente Arosco was born to Erinio

(00:35):
Orosco and Rosa Flores in Zapotlin, Elgrande, Mexico now Ceo
dot Gusman. Adosco went on to become a renowned caricaturist
and painter, known for his Fresco murals. Odosco's family moved
to Guadalajara in eighteen eighty six, and by eighteen eighty
eight they had made their way to Mexico City. His

(00:57):
passion for art blossomed there, as he had me imired
the art in the workshop of Jose Guadalupe Posada, a
printmaker whose work included political and social commentary. As he
passed the workshop on his way to and from school,
he became fascinated by the style of Posada's illustrations. Odosko
studied art in Mexico City, taking classes at the San

(01:19):
Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. By eighteen ninety eight, his
parents had sent him to the country to study agriculture
for pragmatic reasons. He studied at the School of Agriculture
in San Jacinto and attended the National Preparatory School with
the intent of studying architecture later, but in nineteen o three,
his father died of typhus, so Odosco began working to

(01:42):
support his mother and siblings and pay his way through college.
He took a job as an architectural draftsman and hand
tinted post mortem portraits. He wasn't as passionate about agriculture, math,
and architecture as he was about painting. Odosco also injured
his eye and lost his left hand in an accidental explosion,

(02:02):
so he began studying art again at the San Carlos Academy.
By nineteen ten, Odosko's artwork was getting attention. That year,
some of his drawings got recognition at an exhibition commemorating
the centenary of Mexican independence from Spain. The Mexican Revolution,
which was unfolding around this time, affected his artistic viewpoint.

(02:24):
Opposition to the regime of President Portfibio Dias spread, and
political and social turmoil escalated. As power changed hands. Odosko
participated in a student strike and he began creating illustrations
for radical newspapers. He painted with black and what he
said were quote the colors exiled from Impressionist palettes. He

(02:46):
depicted locals who went to the bars and brothels in
his neighborhood. Informed by the context of the Mexican Revolution
and the culture of Mexico City, he emphasized injustice and corruption.
One of the artists who influenced his work was Julio Ruelles,
a Mexican symbolist who created dark, hallucinatory images of mythological characters,

(03:08):
the subconscious, and his own tormented face. While in Orrisaba,
working for the revolutionary newspaper La van Guardia, he met
David Alfaro, Siqueios, and Diego Rivera, who, along with him,
would later be known as the Big Three in Mexican muralism.
Doctor Attul, also known as Herado Murrio, edited La van Guardia.

(03:31):
Doctor Atoul had met Rosco at the San Carlos Academy
years earlier and inspired him to embrace Mexican themes in
his art. After his solo exhibition House of Tears received
a lot of negative criticism, he turned to the US
to find new opportunities. He got to the US in
nineteen seventeen, where customs took a lot of his paintings

(03:53):
because they were deemed indecent. After spending two years in
the States working on his art, he returned to Mexico.
His career in muralism began in nineteen twenty three, when
he started painting his first murals at the National Preparatory
School in Mexico City. Cicados and Rivera were also doing
murals here. This same year, Odosco married Margarita via Datis

(04:17):
and helped found the Union of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors and Engravers.
As he completed more murals, his work received more praise
and international attention. In nineteen twenty seven, he went back
to the US, where he found inspiration in the artwork
of European artists like Francisco Goya and was influenced by

(04:38):
the impact of the Great Depression. He stayed in the
US until nineteen thirty four. The Epic of American Civilization,
a cycle of murals that he completed at Dartmouth College,
was a highlight of his art career in the US.
Adosco went back to Mexico after he left the US,
and he stayed there throughout most of the nineteen forties,

(05:00):
constantly adding to his already robust body of work by
creating new murals exhibiting his idealistic and pessimistic perspectives. He
painted murals in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City,
the University of Guadalajara, the Governor's Palace, the Auspicio Cabanas,
and the Palace of Justice in Mexico City, among other locations.

(05:22):
He also created smaller works like engravings, diesel paintings, and portraits.
He continued to work on frescoes until he died of
heart failure at the age of sixty five. Even though
he faced censorship and financial struggles, he played a key
role in invigorating the public arts movement and has been
honored for exposing Mexican art to a wider international audience.

(05:46):
I'm eaves, Jeffco, and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. Know any fellow
history buffs who would enjoy the show, you can share
it with them. We're on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
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to us at this Day at iHeartMedia dot Com. We're

(06:10):
here every day, so you know where to find us.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Bye, Hello, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that strives to know at least a little
bit more history every day. I'm Gabe Lucier, and today

(06:36):
we're looking at the origins of the jukebox, a vital
part of music history that's just as fun to look
at as it is to listen to. The day was
November twenty third, eighteen eighty nine. An early forerunner of

(06:59):
the modern jukebox was installed for public use at the
Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco, California. The name jukebox
wouldn't be applied for another thirty years or so. When
it was invented, it was known as a nickel in
the slot player. It may have looked drastically different from

(07:20):
what we now know as a jukebox, but its purpose
was about the same. It allowed people to listen to
music in a bar or restaurant without the added cost
of live performers. The first nickel in the slot was
invented by Louis Glass and William Arnold, who both worked
at the Pacific Phonograph Company in San Francisco. They realized

(07:45):
that although the phonograph had captured the public's attention since
its creation in eighteen seventy seven, the machine was still
too expensive for most people to afford. So, in an
effort to bring music to the people to make some
money in the process, Glass and Arnold decided to rig
up a coin operated device that would allow people to

(08:08):
listen to a recording without having to buy their own.
To be fair, other inventors were working on similar machines
around that same time, but Glass and Arnold were the
first to unveil a functioning version to the public. The
first model they built consisted of an Edison class M

(08:29):
electric phonograph housed inside an oak cabinet with a coinslot
mechanism attached. So far so jukebox. But here's where things
start to differ. The first machine had no speakers or amplifiers. Instead,
it had four tube like listening devices connected to the phonograph.

(08:51):
It's a little hard to describe, but if you picture
four stethoscopes attached to a big wooden box, you're not
far off. Each of those four tubes functioned independently, meaning
that up to four people could listen to the same
song simultaneously, provided that each of them paid their own nickel. Also,

(09:12):
for any germaphobes out there, you'll be thrilled to know
that patrons were supplied with towels so they could wipe
off the ends of their tubes before or after each listen.
Another difference from later jukeboxes was the amount of songs
on offer. Modern jukeboxes have many, while the first jukebox

(09:33):
had one. The single song was housed on a wax
cylinder inside the cabinet, which could be swapped out periodically
to give customers something new to listen to. Glass and
Arnold got permission to display their first machine in a
saloon just two blocks away from their offices at the
Phonograph Company. Unfortunately, there's no record of which song was

(09:57):
played first, so we'll have to use our imagination on that.
Despite its limitations, the coin operated phonograph took off overnight.
Within six months, that single player had earned over one
thousand dollars, the equivalent of more than thirty thousand dollars today,
and by the end of the first year, Glass and

(10:19):
Arnold had installed another fifteen machines and raked in more
than four thousand dollars. The instant's success inspired countless imitators
to whip up their own versions all across the country.
Soon there were entire phonograph parlors with multiple nickel and
the slot players so customers could listen to different songs

(10:42):
in the same location. As the machine grew in popularity
over the next decade and a half, improvements were gradually
made to the initial design. The sound quality improved when
disc records replaced the old phonograph cylinders, and the addition
of amplify allowed large groups to listen simultaneously without the

(11:04):
need to hold stethoscopes to their ears. The next major
innovation came in nineteen oh five, when Chicago based inventor
John Gable debuted the Automatic Entertainer, a coin operated disc
playing phonograph that featured twenty four songs to choose from,
though the disc still had to be selected manually. Thirteen

(11:27):
years later, another inventor, Hobart Knee Black, created a part
that could change records automatically, leading to the debut of
the first selective jukeboxes in the nineteen twenties. That decade
presented a challenge to automatic phonographs due to the emerging
technology of radio record sales, and jukebox usage took a

(11:51):
dive when people realized they could hear music for free
on the radio. The hard times kept on coming in
the nineteen thirties, when the Great Depression left most families
with little money for recreation, even just a nickel. However,
once the depression ended, jukeboxes bounced right back, more popular

(12:12):
than ever in a country that was itching to get
out and dance again. It was around this time that
the automatic phonograph finally started to look like a jukebox.
The big four companies in the industry were Ami, Rockola, Seeberg,
and Wurlitzer. These manufacturers introduced now classic jukebox features such

(12:36):
as flashy light up displays and numbered and lettered buttons
that were used to select specific songs. The machines now
had their familiar shapes and features, but it was still
a few years before they would actually be called jukeboxes.
The term originated in the Southern United States sometime in

(12:58):
the late nineteen thirties. It was based on the term
juke joint, which was regional slang for a rowdy bar
or dance hall with lots of loud music. The word
juke comes from the Creole language and is an adjective
that means wild, bad, or wicked. Once the name was set,

(13:18):
jukeboxes entered a golden age, with their peak popularity running
from the nineteen forties through the mid nineteen sixties. In fact,
by nineteen forty five, seventy five percent of all the
records produced annually in the United States were put into jukeboxes.
The radio shook things up again in the nineteen fifties,

(13:41):
when the invention of the transistor introduced the world to
the joys of portable music. Jukebox sales and usage began
to slide from there, but they remained staple fixtures in
plenty of diners, bars, and restaurants. Today you can still
find working vintage jukebox and many of those same locations

(14:02):
and new models are still produced and used as well.
Most of the ones made in the past few decades
play songs either from CDs or digital files, but they
still look a lot like the ones from the nineteen fifties,
complete with domed tops, shiny chrome candy colored light bars,
and if you're really lucky, those tubes of little bubbles

(14:25):
they run up and down the sides. With that much
to look at, it doesn't really matter which song is playing.
Well almost, I'm Gabe Luesier and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
You can learn even more about history by following us

(14:46):
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDIHC show. And if
you'd like to share your favorite jukebox selection, you can
write to me at this day at iHeartMedia dot com.
My own favorite is Jay seventeen. Can't get enough of
that one. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

(15:07):
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.