Without a Song

Jukeboxes have filled American honky-tonks, malt shops and ears for decades, inspiring songs ("Put an-other nickel in, in the nick-el-o-de-on"), and even a modest treasury of jokes (Sample: Two Martians sidle up to a glittering jukebox in a saloon and purr, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"). The pop-music beat goes on, but the coin-operated phonograph business is winding down. Last week Chicago's Wurlitzer Co., which has sold 650,000 jukeboxes in the U.S. since 1933, announced that it will stop manufacturing them next month.

Young people apparently prefer carrying portable radios and cassette recorders to dropping 25-c- into the slot for two plays on a Wurlitzer. "There's a changing life-style in America," laments Wurlitzer Vice President Ago Koerv. " Instead of the soda fountain and local hamburger joint, we have McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken-- organizations that don't want to encourage people to hang around."

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