Posted on 07/11/2020 7:19:53 AM PDT by SamAdams76
I was driving with a younger relative this morning and had on the Sirius/XM 70's station in which Casey Kasem was counting down the Top 40 from the week of 7/12/75.
One of the songs in the countdown was "Please Mr. Please" by Olivia Newton-John in which she urges a fellow bar-fly not to play a certain song on the bar-room jukebox as it reminded her of an old love.
So as she repeatedly sings the verse "Please, Mr., please, don't play B-17", my young relative eventually pipes up to ask me what she means by "B-17". Is it the name of a song that was popular back then?
I then explained that there used to be a contraption called a jukebox that had several stacks of records in them that were usually placed in bars and casual restaurants at the time in which people could drop in a quarter and play three songs of their choice. Each song was numbered accordingly to order of the stack that it was placed in. So "B-17" would be the 17th record in the second stack. So if that record was selected, it would be mechanically pulled out of the stack and dropped into the queue (of records to be played).
It was actually a marvelous display of technology for the times. There was something magical about dropping a quarter, selecting your song and then listening to them play for the entire crowd.
Of course, all of that seems absolutely primitive to the younger generations, who have immediate access to millions of songs on their phone devices.
Are young people even listening to Olivia Newton-John?
I thought she meant dont play with B-17s. Those are dangerously big aircraft. They could hurt you if you play with them.
My 18 year old son loves playing vinyl of AC/DC, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and whatever else good rock and I collected over the years, or he finds for cheap at used record stores. I love hearing what hes spinning.
They probably don’t know why a TV Remote is called a “clicker” either.
My 15 year old nephew received a record player for his birthday.
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He must have been happy to hear Joe Biden advise people to make sure you have the record player on at night.. LOL
Wow I didnt even get it....I thought it was talking about something from the bomber! Dont know the song so cant go by that either.
Anyway, yes, its a jukebox ref.
But our jukebox wasnt quite that way. The AMI used a wheel so there was no stack. Just plain numbered all the slots in order by 10s with letters to separate.
In my era it was a nickle in the jukebox to play Earth Angel.
That’s one of my favorite doo wop songs. I noticed a few days ago that Fred Parris of In the Still of the Night fame is still with us. He’s well over 80 years old at this point.
That is an awesome memory and had to have been one of the best things ever for a kid to get to do.
Peach
I would leave today to live in 1957. Or 67. Or even 77.
What is a pay phone?””
When I was a kid growing up, WE had a phone on the wall in the kitchen.
CRANK PHONE with 20 party line.
2 ‘longs’ & 1 ‘short’ was our ‘number’.
I could go for 1957, but 1967 sucked!
My wife told her students something about don’t be a broken record. Blank stares.
My eighteen year old just learned what a phone busy signal sounds like. He had never heard it before.
I never knew those were the actual lyrics.
There’s also an early Springsteen song (”Growin Up”) where he says, “I pushed B-52 and bombed ‘em with the blues.”
Rarely does one get to live in the country they grew up in...
We have juke wall units at our local diner chain. Partly replaced by those damn video units.
Of course, our closest branch just closed (even wo the stupid virus). The first branch to ever close; unbelievable.
Obviously, Olivia was a Liberator kind of girl.
She never said not to play B-24...
I tjought it was an airplane.
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