Hello all!  John Miller wrote in 031010 MMDigest:

> Tonight I was listening to some LPs of various band organs and
> orchestrions. ... The liner notes state, "the name, Sextrola,
> would indicate use in a red light district."

I hasten to add, with the same logic, that any coin-operated automatic
musical instrument should be named a "pay-ola"!  ;-)

There was (or is?) a line of juke-boxes named "Rock-Olas".  Being
contemporary with a certain kind of music, I presumed that the name
consisted of the prefix "rock" (from "rock-and-roll") and the suffix
"-ola" (like in "Pianola").  But was this really the case?

Best regards
Christofer Noering
Stockholm

 [ I have a newspaper clipping of 1987 that declares, "Yes, there
 [ really is a Rockola behind the Rock-Ola, and he was around long
 [ before rock 'n' roll.  In fact, David C. Rockola of Addison, Ill.,
 [ now has been around for 90 years, and he's still going strong as
 [ the chairman of the jukebox company he founded."
 [
 [ Found at http://www.nationaljukebox.com/rockhist.html
 [
 [ "In the 1930s Rockola moved into pinball games and many other
 [ devices.  As the demand for coin-operated phonographs increased the
 [ temptation to enter the jukebox arena, Rockola purchased a mechanism
 [ from a man named Smythe.  Rockola reengineered this 12-select
 [ mechanism and started making jukeboxes in a big way (1935 Rock-Ola).
 [
 [ "Farny Wurlitzer viewed this as a huge threat to his business based
 [ on Rockola's success in other machines.  Wurlitzer tried to convince
 [ David Rockola that there was no room in the industry for another
 [ manufacturer.  Wurlitzer then filed a $1 million lawsuit claiming
 [ patent infringement on the Smythe mechanism.  Rockola eventually
 [ won the suit but not until he had spent half a million dollars in
 [ legal fees.  This hurt Rockola but didn't kill him.  He continued
 [ manufacturing and in 1939 introduced a series of very successful
 [ jukeboxes called 'Luxury Light-Up'."
 [
 [ -- Robbie