RePlay Magazine Podcast
Welcome to the RePlay Magazine Podcast, hosted by Randy Chilton, which will share interesting bits of “coin-op” history and entertaining stories from industry greats – the visionaries, legends and characters that make the business fun!
RePlay Magazine Podcast
RePlay Magazine Podcast - Glenn Streeter
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Glenn Streeter had a passion for antique radios, and got his hobby started in his garage in 1977. He found his way into the coin machine business by hand-building reproduction, nostalgic-styled jukeboxes. From a storefront on Ventura Boulevard in LA’s San Fernando Valley, Glenn’s Antique Apparatus’ reputation for quality and craftsmanship grew as rock stars, other luminaries and regular folks came in to shop.
In 1992, a unique opportunity fully cemented Glenn’s future in coin-op. Learning that the iconic Rock-Ola jukebox company was for sale, he jumped at the chance. He moved the Chicago-based company out west to Torrance, Calif., propelling it forward while never forgetting its roots. He went so far as to re-create David Rockola’s office in the Torrance, Calif., facility, complete with his desk and key artifacts.
After nearly three decades at the helm, Glenn sold Rock-Ola to Alexander Walder-Smith in 2019, retiring but remaining in touch with many friends he made along the way. With his decades full of experiences, you can bet he’s got a lot of good stories to share. He hits the tip of the iceberg with our host, Randy Chilton, in this episode, starting with the building of his dream house. Give it a listen!
Here's Randy and this month's replay.
SPEAKER_02And um Rockola and Randat is retired and currently living in uh Pallas Verdes. Did I say that right? Rancho Pallas Verdes. Rancho Pallos Verdes. I've seen pictures of the view out your back door, and we can see the humble abode of which you live in. So it looks like you're pretty darn comfortable.
SPEAKER_01My dream house. I bought this property in 88. I tore down the original house and uh built this, it's a version of a Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style, which I modified and added to it. If you can see behind me at all, um from the back doors of this dining room I'm sitting in to the front door is 60 feet, and from the library section to my uh left, all the way to the doors over here is 40 feet. But that includes the kitchen and hallway, and uh it's gorgeous, and it was my dream. I was able to do this after 20 years of not be able to afford it. It's everything I wanted. I wish I had put it in a basement, but I didn't. But I've got a seven whole putting green in my backyard, and it's a little over half acre, and it's a home peninsula. The guy that built this whole development kept this property for himself. And I found out um a couple years after I was here, because when I moved in in 88, there was double phone lines all over the house and outside by the pool and everything. And I couldn't figure that out. And then neighbors told me that Johnson stayed here when he was vice president, and so the Secret Service put in the phone lines, but he came out to inaugurate the new modern restaurant at the airport. Oh I did bear, I did verify that just looking it up. And like I said, I tore it down and built this, and uh everything came, everything's custom made. The floors are quartershawed oaked, all the cabinets are quarters oak. Upstairs on this side from front to back is the whole master suite, and across the the uh whatever you call it, walkway going across that's the uh office over the kitchen, and uh that's pretty much it.
SPEAKER_02But it's like a beautiful home, it's nice that you can do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I left out one thing. ECAST was paid for this because they were subsidizing my sales for two years and paying me to give away jukeboxes, which was stupid. And uh the house is still here, and eCast is not kind of ironic.
SPEAKER_02Kind of ironic. I love it when it works out like that. Well, year and I history goes back years, I mean, many years, and I can't exactly remember why do I remember that maybe in Kansas we were buying antique apparatus jukeboxes? Is that possible?
SPEAKER_01No, I think the first encounter I had with you was probably when we were in uh Hawaii for the Denny's. Uh oh, yeah, and we played uh golf on Lanai on the lower part. Oh, Manelli Bay, yes. And yeah, I think somebody bought the whole island, didn't he? Um the guy that owns Prime.
SPEAKER_02And oh Bezos, very possibly, right?
SPEAKER_01I think so. Well, this is my uh this is my putter now. Yeah, I have uh neuropathy, so I have two uh two walkers and a wheelchair and a motor scooter and this cane, but uh I can still drive.
SPEAKER_02Well the cane works out great. You can just turn it upside down, and it is your putter.
SPEAKER_01Well, it is a it's a great back scratcher, that's for sure. Yeah, life's good. No complaints.
SPEAKER_02Well, I uh I hear you uh entertain a bit in that nice house of yours. So uh before this is over, we can talk about how you get on that invite list. That's uh pretty spectacular. I hear you throw some I hear you throw some big events from your friends.
SPEAKER_01Uh Christmas and uh Super Bowl parties. There you go. It's about all it takes. It's about four. Yeah, we're fortunate we got good friends.
SPEAKER_02That you started as an antique radio collector back in the day. That was your passion, and kind of still is your passion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I uh DBA'd the name Antique Apparatus in 1977, and I was selling antique radios. I got one here to show you. Holy cow! Turn around the other way.
SPEAKER_02Everybody say hi to Key. There's Key.
SPEAKER_03You don't sell the podcast on T.
SPEAKER_01This is uh Atwater Kent breadboard, and they're the only company made these like this, and there's the wiring on the bottom. This is a factory-made radio uh 1923, and this is the cable because you had to run on the batteries because they didn't have power supplies back those, so that was what I was dealing in. And uh I got to be the biggest dealer of this antique radios in the world, and I I had Marconi's, I had the forest, I had incredibles, and I had a buddy, his name's Charlie C of C Scandies, and he was financing me buying collections, and we were just having a ball, it was great, but I've sold most of those, I've just kept the breadboards for myself and some advertising. There's light up advertising in the cases over here, but that was 1977, and then a buddy of mine told me about some jukeboxes for sale in in Denver. So I went jukeboxes. What? So I went around checking, seeing people that were doing these, and I met Tom Cotella, who's he's gone from restoring jukeboxes to making Italian sausage, so he's smart to get out of the the jukebox business, but it's been a very blessed life. I've been very fortunate, and I met a lot of people along the way when I was restoring jukeboxes. But um, one little story that's interesting, and I watched the video with Eddie, the two-part series, and uh he started off talking about meeting the Beatles and how John Lennon was such a gentleman and all that, and it was great. But uh, I don't know if you remember, but I got a contract with Apple to make 100 yellow submarine jukeboxes.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, I did not remember that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it was actually given to me. Uh my buddy Alan Black, Sound Leisure in England, he had the deal through another buddy who had the license with Apple, some kid he grew up with, and uh it was for 200. And he said something about, well, I want to sell them in America, and he says, Call Glenn. And they split the contract and they gave me just gave it to me. Um, and I used to talk to the directors of Apple, and everybody was super nice. All the Beatles um had to sign off on it. Yoko signed off on it, and I ran two little tiny articles in replay in the other magazine, and I sold out before I made the first one. I sold 99 of them. I kept serial number one. You kept 20 some years, and then I sold it for just under $20,000. But the funny thing was, months later, after I got done, Yoko Ono called me, of all people. I was down on the factory floor and I took this call and I said, Who is this? And she told me, and she wanted to buy a yellow submarine jukebox for Julian's 15th birthday. This was years ago. I didn't care for it that much. So I was happy to tell her I couldn't do it. My contract was, they were all sold. I didn't have the parts anymore, blah, blah, blah. But I turned it around to Betts, and they bought three from me. So they everybody was happy. And that's my Beatles story, except for George Harrison came in with my retail store uh when I was restoring jukeboxes. He came in with Rycooter and they signed my apron, which I have a lot of autographs on. If you can see this, I used to buy t-shirts. This was my logo for Antique Apparatus County. Oh, look at all those signatures. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's so many of these people are dead. But you can see uh Freddie Mercury came in with Roger Taylor. They bought two jukeboxes, like 15 minutes. This is this is back when I was restoring all these jukeboxes. Uh-huh. And just tell you a little story quickly. Um Sonabees sold off um Freddie Mercury's collection two years ago, this past January. And it went for over $50 million, and it took a week to sell it. The jukebox I'd restored a Woolitzer 850, which we call a peacock. I think it was the biggest thing Woolitzer ever made. And I sold it to him for $6,500, totally restored. And I'd actually converted it to 45 RPM. Because I found the gears in a jukebox I bought from the golden age with these gears in it, converted to 45, and I just reproduced them, took them to a machine shop and made them so I was able to convert these to a small turntable, etc. So I sold them the jukebox for $6,500, which was going price. And it and they gave me credit because I branded it on the back and the inside on the floor, antique apparatus with electric branding iron. And they gave me credit in the catalog, and it sold for $513,000. My goodness. Yeah, that was not a record for one of my jukeboxes, but that was right up there. What is the record? I had a Swiss dealer, phenomenal couple. The husband's dead, and the wife sold off the business. But they took two of my Peacock jukeboxes that I was manufacturing, and they covered the whole outside of the cabinet with blue lapis, which is semi-precious stone, and the front door. And they took all the metal off and gold plated it, remade the base so they could gold plate that. And they sold two of them back when the pound was three dollars and dollars. And they sold two of them to the far east, to the Mideast for quarter million pounds apiece. Yeah, that's a lot of money. But those guys, you know, they have our money to burn. So matter of speaking. But I when I was restoring jukeboxes, I started making all the parts because the parts were not available, or they were crap. People were making, I mean, and I started making everything. And then uh I made a cabinet one year and took it to the Chicagoland show, which was the biggest show in the country. Then the canning one was bigger, but it went out of business and uh stopped doing it in in Pasadena. But I took a cabinet to uh one show and thinking maybe somebody would like to buy a cabinet because I was making all the other parts, and uh nothing happened. And then um I went to Betson and bought an RI4-5, which was looked like one of those free generator boxes, but I took the Mac out and the keyboard amplifier, all the electronics, shortened some cables and lengthened some cables and installed it in the cabinet. And the next year I went back to the same show, and I had this is a true story. I had guys that I knew that knew jukeboxes, and they come up with their buddies or their wives or whatever, and they go, look at this. Somebody put a new mechanism in this old cabinet, and then I would tell them, I said, the cabinet's not new, we made it. And uh, you know, I get a lot of comments like BS, you know, stuff, and that was the beginning of it. And I sold, I can remember these numbers because it was late in the year when we came out with them, and the first year I sold 22, second year I sold 220, and the third year I sold 660. Wow, and I could never keep up. I was behind, and then Sharper Image picked me up from a little ad I did in the robber port, and they put me on the cover and the two full inside pages, and I never looked back after that.
SPEAKER_02My goodness, and uh tell me um you you met David Rockola. How did how did how did the whole Rockola thing give us that uh color?
SPEAKER_01Well, I went to one of the AMOA shows, and I think it was in Tennessee in the Grand Little Opry building that it was like a giant atrium. I had the flu and I I was sick and I didn't go to the show for two days. And the last day I said, I gotta go to the show. So I went and I was walking around, I wouldn't shake anybody's hands, and I got by the Rockola booth, and Frank Schultz came out and he goes, Glenn, he said they're gonna sell the company, and I went, Oh shit. I went back to my room and dictated a letter to my wife and sent it off, and um, and that's how it started. And then I found out from Frank, God bless his heart, uh, he was great, that I had to contact uh lawyers, Rudnick and Wolf, which is they're gigantic, and uh they were in charge of selling the company, and uh basically they gave it to me. I mean, Donald Rocola just wanted out, he didn't need the money. They own the family, owned real estate, all they owned high-rise buildings on the lakefront, and they own high-rise buildings in New York City, and the old man built uh parking lots because he realized just cement a couple of light bulbs and a guy down at the bottom taking your money. And uh I heard he bought an outdoor boxing arena in Manhattan and during the depression, David Rocola, and turned it into a high-rise uh parking lot, an outdoor boxing arena. Can you imagine? And the family's all gone. Donald never married or had kids, and David, who I did talk to a few times over in Germany. So I I the only thing I can think of is the kids must his kids must have gotten the inheritance.
SPEAKER_02The way it works. And they sold, they made the jukebox was just part of what they made. They were making all types of products back in the day, weren't they?
SPEAKER_01They had some vending machines, they made coffee machines, they made vending machines, they had the fastest vending machine in the business. I found out the numbers were not right on that, and there was somebody involved. So anyway, I ended up just buying the jukebox, and basically I bought the name, yeah, and I kept it a secret for almost 30 years, and then I published it in replay. You're not gonna believe this, but it was like $1,160,000, and most of that was for the name. I just bought some inventory, and Donald was happy to be done with it, yeah. But he's gone now. I think it was 2017. Yeah, I didn't realize he was gone, but he was 60 some when I bought the company, and his father lived to be 96. He was born in 1896, so I guess they got longevity in the family.
SPEAKER_02Sounds like it. Yeah, you know, talking to a lot of uh, you know, through this podcast experience, talking to a lot of guys that have successful career experiences. Everybody has a story where it kind of made a turn. Uh yeah, and and yours was in 1992 when you bought Rockola. I mean, uh you would have you you would have continued making jukeboxes, but that seemed to take it to a whole new level and and just redirected your entire career. That's that's I just love that part of the story.
SPEAKER_01Well, again, I think I'm very fortunate, but I was the right company and the right guy to buy it because I was already in the manufacturing business. That just uh took my bottom line up to uh add it to the gross sales, being in the commercial side of the business. And Frank Schultz was a big help and some of his people. Because I, if you remember right, I rented a 10,000 square foot warehouse next to O'Hare and would ship jukeboxes into there to centrally distribute them. But Frank was a lifesaver because I didn't really know that much about the commercial side. Yeah, um Joel Freeman called me and I was at the factory, and he says, I'm hearing rumors, you know, that you're buying the company, blah, blah, blah. And I was already in escrow, and I kind of joked around with him a little bit, and I said, Yeah, maybe with your money. And he's laughing, and I could tell he was smoking a cigar. And then I told him, uh, I said, I did buy it, it's in escrow. And I I think it sounded like he almost swallowed the cigar. That's pretty funny. He made he made two mistakes. One, he should have bought the company for what I bought it for, and just taken it off the market instead of letting somebody like me come along and get it, because I was buying mechanisms and everything from them, and they'd gone through, I think, at three or four presidents, and I didn't know next year if I was going to get supplies or not. So I brought everybody into my conference room and my bankers and all that, and said I wanted to buy this company, and uh it worked out, but the other mistake he made was they tried to knock off my product, thinking they would put me out of business, but he didn't have the distribute. His distributors were not set up for selling to the home market. And I had this huge network that I'd gained through the billiard Congress shows, you know, for rec rooms and homes. And I went to the first show and doubled my dealership overnight. And I had distributors worldwide. I even was selling to a guy in Russia before Putin and took over to Crimea. But we we had a dealer in uh Mumbai, India, we had all over the world, and it was great. Anyway, I uh started to ramble after a while.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you know, your stories are fascinating. Um, I'm gonna bounce around here. Um just uh just a little bit. You served in the Navy prior or during your work with the uh radio collection, correct?
SPEAKER_01Actually, the radio collection came after that. I got a draft notice. I um didn't go back to high school and never graduated, but I had my own business and hiring the neighbors at St. Augustine Beach, which was a tourist town. And I'm renting uh those rafts on the beach, and I took in surfboards and started, ended up actually probably the first crude surf shop in St. Augustine, Florida, and I made like $4,000 that year. Bought myself a 1959 Chevy with a big fins on the back. Oh, yeah. Oh, bought my mother colored TV, and then I got a draft notice, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened. So I went in the I joined the Navy, and then I ended up in submarine service. And the last boat I was on was the barbell, the 580 out of Hawaii, and the last thing it did before they put in a display was the Hunt for Red October movie.
SPEAKER_02That's a great movie.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's a great movie, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. Yeah, I watched that. But my wife laughs at me because I watch it all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, interesting. And I had a very blessed life. I got to Hawaii out of electrician school, and uh crazy thing was they had just put my boat in dry dock for 18 months overhaul, and it went 23 months, and I'm surfing. I mean, I had to go to work every day and had to stay on board every fortnight, but I ended up just I'll tell you, I'm just the luckiest guy in the world. I ended up with a studio apartment in Waikiki for $90 a month. I'm the only guy on the boat, including officers, that had another place other than the barracks while they were overhauling the boat. And it was incredible. I mean, if you've ever been to Waikiki, they had a big A-frame down at the beach. I was two blocks from that, right on that street, because it's only two blocks to the Illawai Canal. And uh yeah, it was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02Well, regardless, uh, regardless of your station on uh Waikiki Beach, we thank you for your service.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I was on the uh sub pack rifle team and uh shooting 45 um pistols, and uh my brother and I were expert shooters. We were taught when we were like 10. And uh ended up teaching marksmanship at uh Boy Scout camp and in boot camp. Um I put all the I had sighted in a rifle and I put all the all the bullets in a circle like that, and I got shooter of the week.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I got out I got out just before 1970, 69, and Woodstock was a week before that, and I was actually hitchhiking in San Francisco, and this couple picked me up in a Volkswagen bus, of course, and all they're talking about is Woodstock, and I'm going, what's Woodstock? It's crazy. And uh, but I did go to Altamont where the Rolling Stones performed out in the middle of nowhere.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that the one where they had some people die?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they hired the Hells Angels to be security, and they knifed a guy that tried to get up on the stage, and some people fell in the canal, and that water is just rushing through. And you don't stand a chance, but I I think two or three people actually died.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, my goodness. Well, that's uh interesting part of the history. And you were born in Georgia, correct?
SPEAKER_01Brunswick, Georgia, Glenn County.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what did your what did what did your parents do? What did your dad do?
SPEAKER_01My dad was a lifer in the Navy, that's why I went in the Navy, and he got through the war. He was on escort carriers in the Pacific, shooting down kamikaze. He got through the whole war, and he was stationed here in San Diego at the uh training base, and they had a small epidemic of uh polio. And he went to work one day and he told my mom he had a pretty bad headache and he had polio of the brain. They found him found him slumped over his desk. I was four, and my younger brother was one. Oh no, and we went back to uh St. Augustine, Florida, because that's where my mom was from. And her father, my grandfather, was a uh politician, he was a state representative, the town hassee, and he owned the local St. Augustine Press and did all the printing for Jacksonville for advertising because he had a uh color printing press. So that's what happened.
SPEAKER_02Let's give uh mom and dad a name. What's your mom and dad's name?
SPEAKER_01My dad's name was Milford, Milford, and he said he wouldn't name a dog as an old English name, he wouldn't name a dog Milford. So it was I got the name of the county I was born in, Glen, and my mother's mother's name was Lorraine, yeah, Shepard.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful name, yeah.
SPEAKER_01They were both beautiful. If you can see my dad, he looked like Tom Selleck when he was young, he had a big cliff and his chin and big dimples, but when he took off his hat, he was bald, he was bald before he was in his late 20s. Oh, you're just I but I got this from my mother's side for the jeans. Yeah, this is for our mother's year for baldness. It's called hair.
SPEAKER_02It's called hair. Well, thank goodness for our mom. I have the same same story. And uh well, thanks for sharing that story about your mom and your dad. Uh yeah, that's awesome. Okay, a couple more questions, uh, and we'll wrap this up. I could talk to you all day. Um, may just call you back on my own dime and continue this. But um, so uh we've already already established 1992 as a real flash point in your career when you uh bought Rock Oliver $1.1 million. So um as far as mentors and people of influence that really impacted your life in a very big way, uh who are what what's a name or two that come come to mind? Um Ford? Ford.
SPEAKER_01And I'll just throw in this little tidbit. We actually made a jukebox for Mr. Ford, uh, not the original Christian, it goes way back. Um, but his wife bought it for him for a birthday, and they sent me a wheel off the um winning car at Le Mans, and they machined it and drilled holes in it. So that was the grill in the jukebox, and we put Kavillar on the front of the cabinet, and they brought, they made some other stuff uh the ship to me uh that we lit up with LEDs and said Ford up on the top. His is the old man Ford and what he did with um automation and not automation, um what do you call it when assembly?
SPEAKER_02Assembly line, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh assembly line. You know, one of the things he did, and I'll lead into something else. He actually designed a box from the bat for the battery company that was making the batteries that he was putting in his cars. He actually designed a crate and made them screw it together instead of putting nails in it. And those were the running boards, they were the exact size, the the running boards for his cars that went to frame to frame across the bottom. He was a genius, and most people don't know this. I've never announced this, but do you know how many models the company makes with all the different Elvis and Harley Davison and the clear plastic ones and the what I call the crystal? But we make probably close, somewhere between 30 and 50 models. Only make one cabinet and one door. Now the cutouts on the door vary, but it's all one cabinet, and I changed that about halfway through my career because uh one piece, one tool wore out. The side metal on the bubbler 1015. There were six of those. So that tool wore out. And I had a new, I changed the design and simplified it. And I changed the cabinet at the same time, and then all the cabinets from then on are all the same. We were able to shorten up the cabinet on the touch screen digital jukebox because you didn't have the mechanism inside. So we were able to take five inches off the cabinet, and we just made another tool, had the company make another tool that were pressing the sides, and we made it wider so we could cut it in half, and we get one cabinet out of one pressing versus two pressings to make the uh 45 and CD mechanisms and inside them. Yeah, one cabinet.
SPEAKER_02So, Mr. Ford, okay. Anybody else come to mind as critical in the success of Glenn Streeter?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, I think the product was a good great salesman for me, and I saw I've got a couple of stories besides Freddie Mercury, but I had sold a couple of jukeboxes, the new ones. No, actually, they were the restored ones, to uh Marlon and Tito of the Jackson 5. And then uh Michael came in. My story actually came in twice, and the second time he ended up buying a jukebox from me and happened to be a Rocola 1428 with the green plastics on the top for Quincy Jones after the thriller album came out. You know, that's the largest selling album in history.
SPEAKER_02I think I had heard that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02You know, I could do the thriller dance. Would you like me to stand up and go through it?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Maybe after we get off this going, no, no, no, don't do it, don't do it.
SPEAKER_01Hey, uh uh I delivered, I delivered the jukebox to Quincy Jones on a Saturday. I want to make sure I did it myself. And he was in Bel Air, he had a a Spanish revival old house with the tiles on the roof and everything. And we're down on the floor going through a 78 RPM rhythm and blues and jazz records because it only held 20 records, like the Willitzer only held 24, and he played the top side. But I was on the floor with him, and he was married to Peggy Lipton. I didn't see her, but I did see the kids running around. So that was my story about Quincy, and he was just a total gentleman. My favorite autograph on the apron is Ricky Nelson.
SPEAKER_02Ricky Nelson, okay.
SPEAKER_01Why is that? He's one of the oldest ones. I mean, I remember New Year's Eve. Uh I was out on a date, and I heard over the radio in the car that Nelson died in the airplane. And I thought Willie Nelson had died, and I got home and turned on the radio and then found out it was Ricky. And uh he was one of my you know, childhood air heroes to the Nelsons. I sent a big wreath of flowers, and I got a nice handwritten note back from Harriet, and I used to see her out in the valley all the time driving an old faded yellow Mercedes. But uh tragedy.
SPEAKER_02But I heard you I heard you sold uh few jukeboxes to Howard Hughes along with no, no, not Howard Hughes, Hugh Hefner, Hugh Hefner.
SPEAKER_01Actually, I didn't sell any to him, but um we were in Playboy four times, two times, one is antique apparatus in the centerfold, and one is Rockola when he did the twins. It was the uh centennial issue January 2000, and he didn't like the photographs, he came back and got the jukebox again, and I volunteered to help, but they were busy, too busy for me. Yeah, great story. Yeah, we've been in a lot of magazines, we've been in a lot of catalogs on a lot of TV stations, been on the History Channel with with Gary Stearns and something about money, and then um the mailman from uh Cheers.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01He had that made in America thing with that big bus, and he came to the factory and they shot a whole day at the factory. Um, that was one of the best, and I did a video one time with Pat Summerell narrating it, and I think they charged me $500 extra to say this is Pat Summerl. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02How was your Sharper Image experience? Did you sell a lot of buying? You were on the cover of Sharper Image.
SPEAKER_01On the cover in the two inside pages, and they ordered, like uh my memory's correct, about 135 jukeboxes that Christmas season. And I'm delivering their Christmas orders in February and March, and they're screaming at me. And they were doubling their money with women with headsets and taking credit cards on the phone. And I think I was selling back in those days, I would they were $49.95 wholesale, and they were selling them for $9,600 plus shipping.
SPEAKER_02That's good work. You know, in preparation for this, I always talk to a few people, I get to read a lot of stuff. It's one of the most fun things I get to do because I mean I've known Glenn Streeter and of Glenn Streeter, but really just you know, and Key, who's right there beside you, is always does a great job of uh of helping helping me prepare for these things. But, you know, um pretty interesting that people talk about you in in very uh different and complimentary terms. Uh, you know, I hear, you know, he's a he's a man among men. And one of the com one of the notes I wrote down, um one peep one person described you as the most humble man I've ever known. So you've been able to uh maintain your humility and sincerity and friendships through it all.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm sure that I started most of those rumors myself.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, a couple of them did come from you.
SPEAKER_01You know, I one of my expressions is luck, you know, comes by, and people jump, some people jump on the bandwagon, and most of them say, Oh, I was gonna do that, but they didn't. I can't believe believe I ended up buying Rockola. I got into this business, I mean, from radio collecting, and everybody thinks I'm in the music business, and I make the phonographs, I don't make the music. Very blessed, very blessed, and very, very appreciative. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, and if you had a little bit worse case of the flu at that AMOA show, you don't come out and Frank doesn't tell you Rock Golders for sale. How's that for exactly somebody somebody looking out for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, we just love those stories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he was a very kind man.
SPEAKER_02I'm hoping that happens to me someday, Glenn.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think you I think you're doing okay. I've I've heard rumors in the other direction, also.
SPEAKER_02I get to do things like this, so it's it's so much fun.
SPEAKER_01How I got in the jukebox business is crazy. I mean, this buddy of mine tells me there's 42 jukeboxes for sale in Denver. Uh-huh. And I went over, I flew over there, and a guy picked me up, and Mexican fellow with a ponytail down to his waist. And there was 42 jukeboxes in this basement at this building. And I'm literally walking across the top of them because they were just put together like this. Charlie C. and my buddy Peter and Carmel that told me about it. We drove 42 or two 20-foot trucks with 42 jukeboxes in them back across the Rocky Mountains, and we didn't have a clue what we were doing.
SPEAKER_02What kind of jukeboxes were they?
SPEAKER_01Uh, they were mostly Woolitzers, it was rock olas. Um, a lot of the early wooden cabinets, but there were several 1015s, you know, the bubbler, what I call them. I actually named those in my early brochures, the bubbler and the peacock and the gazelle. And now everybody calls them all bubblers. Right. Now the new company, and I was 48, I think it was 48 when I bought Rockola. And Alexander, who bought my company, my my British distributor, um, he he was the same age when he bought in 2019. But um, he was my distributor in England, and I had a lot of dealers over there at like four, and he kept asking for distributorship, and I finally gave it to him, and he increased sales like five times what all those guys were doing before. Yeah, and uh yeah, he's got a lot of history wheeling and dealing in Africa and doing all that, and uh he's uh interesting guy and very well connected over in England. The uh Porsche brother and sister that own Porsche and Volkswagen and the biggest car company in the world, they were just wedding, plus a lot of other people, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's good connection. Well, he's uh sound like a great guy to be what do we call that third generation owner of uh one of the most famous brands, and and rockola. I I learned this in the research. I never realized there's an argument to be made that rock and roll came from the term rockola, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Would it it wouldn't come from Woolitzer, it wouldn't come from Seabird or MI. But the old man put the dash in there because his name was not spelled that way, but people will pronounce his name rockola, and he didn't like that, so he ended up putting a dash in there, so they had to pronounce the O. But if you put another R right after the dash, you got rock and roller.
SPEAKER_02You got rock and roll, of course that's where it came from.
SPEAKER_01And the other thing, uh, nobody knows, but the term jukebox, when I got into the business, they were called coin operated phonographs. Nobody called them jukeboxes, and then after a while, and that's a black terminology, and we don't know, you know, they had juke joints, but we don't know if it's something from working in the fields, or I don't know if it was a plant. They nobody knows, but they had these juke joints, and no matter how poor sometimes they were dirt floors, they had a jukebox in them. Always. The jukebox changed everything. You know, it it knocked out public, I mean, entertainment in the bars and restaurants. Um, couples singing or whatever, the jukeboxes kind of took over. Um, I will tell you one story about you know who Alan Black is? Sound leisure in England.
SPEAKER_02I don't know Alan Black.
SPEAKER_01He were on the same track. We we started making reproduction jukeboxes about the same time. And uh we were best friends, and this was a contract. We shook hands and honorable, super honorable guy. And he told me a story about how they were trying to get this guy in Scotland or someplace to put a jukebox in his place, and they had CD jukeboxes, and they were getting a pound a song or something like that back in the early days, and they said they would warranty and they'll take care of it and blah blah blah. And he called up one time and he says, jukebox isn't working, so they trekked all the way up there and they opened it up, and the pounds just gushed out on the floor. It wouldn't take any more money, and that's why I quit working. Yeah, I thought that was a great story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's uh that's good stuff. Well, um, we could uh we could continue this because you just have so many stories, but uh we'll we'll wrap it up. But uh well, this is this is the favorite part. I mean, this has uh been a real honor. Uh and you know, Key and I are both very thankful to you for making the time. I know it a little scheduling problem that we had a little technical issue, but but you stuck with it and you made time for us, and that's a big deal to us. So uh that we really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01Well, it it goes both ways. I appreciate it, and it's good to see your face again. It's been a long time.
SPEAKER_02And this is really great. So thank you, thank you very much. This has been a real pleasure to reconnect with you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Randy.
SPEAKER_02Okay, thank you, Greg. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Game over.