Antique jukeboxes have moved out of the bars and into collectors’ homes, and the country’s only full-time jukebox repairman is in Brooklyn. Perry Rosen has been fixing jukeboxes since the 70s, and he travels throughout the city to make sure the old machines can still play the hits.
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Perry Rosen bought his first jukebox in 1978, and what started as a teenage fascination became an unconventional career path. Perry is one of the only full-time jukebox repairman in the United States, and he works throughout New York City to keep the older models running good as new.
Rosen operates a workshop out of the basement of his home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Though he started his career as a telephone technician, he’s become an expert on the inner workings of antique jukeboxes through decades of dedicated tinkering. He also owns seven jukeboxes of his own, including the first one he bought and learned his trade on.
Rosen says that most of the jukeboxes he repairs can be found in the homes of collectors and older individuals who are keen to evoke the nostalgia of listening to jukeboxes in their youth. Rosen rarely goes out to service jukeboxes in bars anymore; he says that he prefers not to go to the bars, but he also acknowledged that bars have transitioned from jukeboxes to digital music players.
The nostalgia of antique jukeboxes doesn’t appeal to Rosen; he says he is interested in the mechanics of the machines, and he doesn’t even consider himself to be a big music fan. The jukeboxes that have disappeared from bars are illustrative of the evocative old New York that many hope to preserve, and Rosen’s unique view of that world, as well as his individual approach to his profession, is entertaining and informative.
Transcript
Perry: It’s fun, it’s interesting, you get to go to many different, unusual, uh, places, uh, that most people, uh, in any kind of repair business wouldn’t end up on.
It works like a jukebox. You put your coin in, and you push a button.
Well, I think, uh, I think we blew something out here. Maybe next time.
Jeri: Oh, hi Perry. How are you, how’s everything been?
Perry: Traffic was a little bit rough getting here, but I made it.
Jeri: Hi, I’m Jeri Saffron, and this is my home. Perry is my jukebox repair guy. It gets sick, Perry comes.
Interviewer: And he never gets stumped?
Jeri: No, no, he figures it out pretty early on.
Perry: This fuse is blown.
Jeri: in the 1970s, very early 1970s, there was a song ‘Palapras, Palapras.’ It always moved me, it always brought me back to a certain time in my life, in my younger days. So whenever I need a little lift, that’s one of them, so, so, it’s a great song. I think it is. And this is it. Yeah, this is it.
Interviewer: So do you consider yourself a musician, in some sense?
Perry: No, I consider myself an artist. At the beginning, it started off as a hobby and it became a career. And, uh, when it becomes a career, it’s not as interesting or fun as it once was when it was a hobby. It becomes a job. It’s the same thing, the same thing as anybody else. This is what I do, as opposed to what other people do.
