This website on Australian Musicola jukeboxes, is a tribute to the work done by Reginald Alan Long (1964 - ♰2012), better known as "Frog".
I came across Frog's website many years ago while researching American Jukeboxes. Although his website was about Australian jukeboxes, I admired his passion for them.
Looking deeper I saw that Frog was not just a collector but genuinely interested in the history of the Musicola jukeboxes, the manufacturer and went even as far as restoring them himself.
Frog showing his Musicola collection in his Lounge Room (from left to right: Musicola F-100, E40/10, M12/10C, V-100 Mark II, M12/10B and M12/10C)
When re-visiting some bookmarked jukebox websites in the second half of 2021, I was surprised to find that Frog's Musicola website (www.musicolajukeboxes.com) had disappeared.
After some investigation I found that the website was no longer available online per December 2020 and I couldn't really find more information on Musicola Jukeboxes.
After some digging I learned that Frog had died, way too young, at 48 years of age. Frog left behind his wife Olga and 2 children.
As I previously hosted some "lost" websites on American jukeboxes (see TomsZone, Seeburg History, Seeburg Ed's)
I felt I should also host a copy of Frog's website, in order to keep his work alive.
With the help of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I was able to recollect 95% of Frog's website and put it back together as he left it (as I later found out) in 2012.
After "restoring" his website, I have been hosting it since November 2021. You can still visit his original website.
This site however is an "updated" (responsive) version of his information added with some new material. During the October 2022 Rock around the Jukebox event in the Netherlands
I spoke with Gert Almind from the Danish Jukebox Archive and we discussed Musicola jukeboxes. He told me that back in 2009 he received a CD with Musicola material from an Australian collector.
Gert promised me a copy of the CD and once I received it, I discovered it contained mainly factory photos, also shown on Frog's website but in much higher resolution.
I went back to research and found that the factory photos are scanned in from the originals that were in a scrapbook, assembled by John Stewart Porter (one of founders of Porter & Wilding), that was part of Frog's collection.
The scrapbook, together with the Musicola jukebox collection, was donated in 2014 by Frog's widow Olga to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
With these higher resolution images I created my version of the Musicola jukebox website while honoring the color scheme and most of the content from Frog.
I hope you enjoy this website and if you have any information on Musicola Jukeboxes no matter how small, please let me know.
Best regards,
David van Etten
The Netherlands
November 2022
