Opinion
Jukebox memories on Tramore’s boulevard of teenage dreams
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A rumour was circulating in Tramore that one of the six jukeboxes from Strand Road had been saved.
This was welcome news to a returning exile like me who spent many summers working “down around”, as we say in Tramore, about that strip of road that runs from the old railway station down to the sea.
It was a boulevard of teenage dreams stoked by the sound of the jukebox.
In the middle was the Atlantic Ballroom, a stopping-off place for all the great showbands of yesteryear, and across the road was the Silver Slipper. It hosted Rory Gallagher, Skid Row, Thin Lizzy, Horslips, the Boomtown Rats and more during my teenage years.
I worked on the bumper track in Freddie’s, cleaning the cars in the early morning, and did a shift later in the day collecting the fares and chatting to the girls drawn by the glamour of my workplace.
A perennial favourite among those who lounged against the protective cage around Freddie’s jukebox was the French crooner Serge Gainsbourg and his accomplice Jane Birkin on a single that repaid its price many times over, Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus.
Britt Ekland gave Jane a good run for her money on Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night, a lusty tale which sowed the summer air with desire and was banned by the BBC.
On quiet afternoons in the cavernous gloom of the bumper track I would chat away with the track monitor, Freddie’s wife Bunny. When the jukebox went quiet, she would pass me a coin and say: “Put on Elvis.”
I would walk through to the arcade past the flipper and slot machines, and tap in the co-ordinates, C-5, for An American Trilogy.
Back at my post, we would give our full attention to the high baritone sound of the King emoting his fondness for some place in America called Dixie.
Often on a summer’s morning I would spy the hirsute figure of Joe Hendry soaking up the sun and the tunes in his dungarees, his back against the wall of the Silver Slipper across the road from Freddie’s.
Today he is something of a local historian and it was to Joe that I turned for confirmation or otherwise of the rumour that one of the Strand Road jukeboxes had been saved.
“Leave it with me,” said Joe.
A week or so later, we met up outside the Seagull Bakery and took a back lane that led us to a bungalow off Church Road where Joey Matthews resides with his mother, Hanora, who is 100 years old.
Joey worked on the Dooley’s Arcade premises every summer for 50 years, since the age of 10, thanks to his mother’s friendship with Mrs Dooley.
By his own account, he could be an annoying little fella who on occasion was hung up by his jumper on the door of the chip shop or confined to the nearby telephone box by a rope used to fasten the door.
Not having a record player at home, he was besotted with the jukebox and was often reprimanded by Mrs Dooley for turning up the volume.
The Dooley family grew to find his services invaluable and so it was that in the early 2000s he was allowed to carry off the beautiful Rockola jukebox with its cargo of vinyl when it was replaced by a sad imitation, the CD jukebox.
In the ’70s, Dooley’s jukebox was prized by teenagers who turned up their noses at soft rock ballads such as Arms of Mary by the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver, Gaye by Clifford T Ward or the offensively schmaltzy Honey by Bobby Goldsboro.
Dooley aficionados had a particular love for B-sides such as David Bowie’s version of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam and the avant-garde Sebastian by Steve Harley. Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze found a good home there too.
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As we listened to the full, crackling sound of the original Fleetwood Mac recording of The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown), Joey waxed lyrical and regretful about a bygone era when teenagers would have to be asked not to sit on the jukebox and sand would be regularly removed from it.
“We didn’t realise it then, but they were great times. Strand Road has lost all that, it’s not the same any more without the jukeboxes.”
The cacophony of the amusement park which has sprang up across the road from the old arcades is not easy on the ear. The Silver Slipper and the Atlantic Ballroom are long gone. And it pains me to walk past Freddie’s, closed and shuttered these many years.
Spotify and headphones are no substitute for the shared experience of hanging around a jukebox with like-minded souls.
