“I’ve never done this, walk around and count them,” Muller says, as he begins counting a row of jukeboxes tucked under a shelf of records.

He walks through the add-on garage, porch, living room and foyer. So far, he’s counted 62 jukeboxes, just in his own house — plus 40 in stock at his store, and plenty more in storage elsewhere.

“I’ve been telling people we have over a hundred,” Muller says. “Now, I know it’s even way more than that.”

Most of these jukeboxes are part of his company, Jukeboxes Unlimited, which he’s owned since 1971. He guts many of them to salvage their parts for assisting with repairs. Others, he fixes up to sell, while still others — the nicer looking ones, especially those that light up — he rents for parties and dances.

And some, Muller simply falls in love with and keeps for himself, like his 1948 Seeburg M100A. It sits in the corner of his living room at home.

“This machine is 100 percent original, every single aspect of it: the original cartridge, the original needle and original old 78 rpm records,” he says before playing Frankie Lymon’s “Goody Goody.”

Back when he got his start in the 1970s in Los Angeles, there were a lot of guys like him in the jukebox business — but he set himself apart by selling to the stars. His famous clients include Steve Martin and Mick Fleetwood, and their notes and copies of checks still fill books and albums of his. He even used to go to the Playboy Mansion to repair a jukebox owned by Hugh Hefner.

Muller, now 72, has seen many of his competitors go away. The business has gotten less glamorous, but he keeps busy through his online store.

“I get so many emails. I get ’em from all over the world, and it’s the same thing. It’s like, ‘Can you tell me what gear goes with this gear?’ And you know, for me to just get back to them and say, ‘What jukebox are you even talking about?’ I just don’t have time,” he explains.

He drives 50 miles to visit one of those people who contacted him online — Aline DeGroote, in Anaheim, Calif. She has promised to give him some records if he can take her jukebox off her hands.

Muller doesn’t need more records. The add-on to his house is full of them; he has hundreds and thousands already. Many are duplicates, and most aren’t worth that much — but he’s excited about the records DeGroote is offering anyway.

“I don’t collect records: I amass records,” he explains as he drives to DeGroote’s home. “I don’t even know what we’re getting today. I’m sure I already have 20 copies of what she’s got, but it’s an addiction.”

DeGroote’s jukebox is from the early ’60s, and she’s had some trouble selling it. She tried Craigslist and thrift stores.

“When I first tried to sell the jukebox, people were like, ‘Well, does it play CDs?'” DeGroote says.

Her dad, who died five years ago, used to keep the jukebox in the pool room. She grew up listening to it. But now it’s broken, and she’s selling it to Muller for $75.

“I wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it for what it is,” she explains. “It’s a jukebox that plays old music.”

When she pulls out seven boxes of records, Muller’s face lights up. There are at least 2,000. He sorts through the records, putting them in other boxes he brought himself — “banana boxes,” he calls them, since he picked them up at the local grocery store.

“A packed banana box is 400 records,” he explains. “Four hundred 45s in a banana box.”

As he sorts through them, he gets excited when he sees a record by The Fleetwoods. He begins to sing “Come Softly To Me,” and DeGroote joins in.

Muller says he could make decent money if he sold his collection of over 400,000 records. But he doesn’t plan to unless someone comes along with a huge offer, because the records aren’t for his business.

They’re for his collection. And eventually, he’ll give them to his son.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Filmed Entertainment Inc., which owns Columbia House, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday in a Manhattan court after more than two decades of declining revenues, according to a company statement.

Although Columbia House moved exclusively to DVDs in 2010, it could not stay afloat in an industry crowded with streaming services. The company’s annual revenues peaked in 1996 at $1.4 billion, but by 2014, revenues had dwindled to just $17 million.

Columbia House “started in 1955 as a way for the record label Columbia to sell vinyl records via mail order,” according to the A.V. Club, which adds that it “continually adapted to and changed with the times, as new formats such as 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs emerged and influenced how consumers listened to music.”

Columbia House once set the bar for the music-club subscription business model, becoming a household — or at least high school — name through its famous deal: piles of CDs and tapes for a penny.

But with giving away CDs nearly free, how exactly was Columbia House turning a profit?

“The phrase you want is ‘negative option,’ ” Piotr Orlov said, referencing the idea of hooking people with a good deal and then roping them into a contract. (Orlov is a contributing editor for NPR music and former Columbia House director of A&R and marketing between 1996 and 1999.)

“You had a contract that was over a short period of time — two, three or four years — you had to buy a number of titles under regular prices,” he said. “And these regular prices put CD store prices to shame. Like $19.99 [instead of] $11.99. It was an enormous markup.”

Orlov also said Columbia House signed multimillion-dollar contracts with companies such as Sony, Warner Music and others that allowed it to obtain the raw materials and produce its own CDs.

“[Columbia House] was partially owned by major music distributors. [It] would get the music parts — the art and the master tape — and manufacture it themselves.”

Columbia House, however, wasn’t the only one cashing in. Because the CDs came in the mail and customers could pay with cash or check, Orlov said the subscription process lent itself to what he called “low-grade mail fraud.”

“People would fill out a real address with fake names and get 12 free CDs,” he said. “The punch line to this joke is that everybody who worked at Columbia House had done this too [earlier in life]. It really was like an inside joke.”

For another NPR music denizen, Stephen Thompson, Columbia House also represented more than mere music.

“For generations of people, Columbia House was a huge rite of passage — your first foray into maybe wrecking your credit rating, or at least running afoul of an authority beyond your hometown. I was never a member myself, because my parents filled my head with horror stories, but I always look back on Columbia House as, like, Baby’s First Mail Fraud,” he said.

Its business model wasn’t perfect, Orlov said, but Columbia House was valuable in its time.

“What it did do was serve a purpose. If you didn’t have a record store, this was the closest you got to having a good music selection. It put in front of you the ability to buy CDs and send them to your house even if you lived in [the middle of nowhere].”

The FEI statement said the decline was “driven by the advent of digital media and resulting declines in the recorded music business and the home-entertainment segment of the film business.” While streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify surely cut into Columbia House’s profits, Orlov said the main reason for the company’s downfall is something else entirely.

“No one cares about owning CDs anymore,” he said.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

He was born Riley B. King on a plantation in Itta Bena, Miss. He played on street corners before heading to Memphis, Tenn., where he stayed with his cousin, the great country bluesman Bukka White. His career took off thanks to radio; he got a spot on the radio show of Sonny Boy Williamson II, then landed his own slot on black-run WDIA in Memphis. He needed a handle. At first it was Beale Street Blues Boy. Then Blues Boy King. Finally B.B. King stuck.

You can’t mention names without talking about his guitar, Lucille. It was actually more than one. The story goes that the first was a $30 acoustic he was playing at a dance in Arkansas when two men got in a fight, kicked over a stove and started a fire. When King was safe outside, he realized he’d left the guitar inside. He ran back into the burning dance hall to save it. After he learned the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to name his guitar for her to remind himself never to get into a fight over a woman. And since then, every one of his trademark Gibson ES-355s has been named Lucille.

The sound he got out of her was what set him apart. Playing high up on the neck, he’d push a string as he picked it, bending the note to make it cry. He didn’t burn a lot of fast licks, but you could feel each note he played. Nobody sounded like B.B. King, though later on plenty of rockers tried. (Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green got closest.)

King scored an R&B hit in 1951 with “Three O’Clock Blues” and began the next stage of his life as a touring musician. According to his website, King and his band played 342 one-night stands in 1956. He performed more than 250 nights a year into his 80s, his distinctive guitar sound and smooth vocals filling just about every major venue in the U.S. and abroad. In 1991, he opened his own spot, B.B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis. Others followed, and King remained involved in how they were run.

He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in ’87. He was so beloved that he received honorary degrees from the Berklee College of Music as well as Yale and Brown universities, among others.

In 1970, he scored a crossover hit with “The Thrill Is Gone.” It’s the tune everyone knows — classic B.B. King: Lucille’s piercing single notes punctuating each phrase.

The thrill is gone.
The thrill is gone away from me.
Although I’ll still live on,
But so lonely I’ll be.

That pretty well sums up how a lot of fans are feeling right now, now that B.B. King is finally gone.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Six nights a week on The Art Laboe Connection, Laboe takes requests from his loyal listeners, who tune in on more than a dozen stations in California and the Southwestern United States.

This week, he’ll be hosting his annual series of Valentine’s concerts, featuring the “Oldies But Goodies” he’s played for decades.

Laboe, with his welcoming baritone voice, has won his share of accolades over his long career. Among others, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1981 and a spot in the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2012.

But it’s the adoration of Laboe’s fans that keeps him going.

“You have a beautiful, handsome voice,” caller “Leticia” recently told Laboe on the air. “You’re in the right field.”

Somewhat flustered, Laboe replied, “You’ve got me blushing.”

In Love With Radio From An Early Age

Laboe’s story starts in 1925, when he was born Arthur Egnoian in Salt Lake City.

He says from the moment his family got their first radio, he was hooked.

“I was 8 years old and we plugged it in, and I told my mom, ‘Mom, the box is talking!’ ” Laboe recalls. “And after that, she couldn’t tear me away from this radio.”

By the time he was a teenager, he was on the air himself with a low-watt ham radio.

“I’d talk to neighbors and I’d give them a phone number once in a while,” Laboe says, “and I could get a call or two.”

He served in the military during World War II, and his training for the U.S. Army Signal Corps helped him to talk his way into a job in radio. It was a station manager at KSAN in San Francisco who said he should change his last name from Egnoian to Laboe.

An Early Pioneer In Rock ‘N’ Roll

By the mid-1950s, the newly renamed Art Laboe was hosting his own show in Los Angeles, just as rock ‘n’ roll was bursting into the scene. And Laboe wanted to be part of it.

“People are playing Doris Day, [and] ‘Que Sera, Sera,’ ” Laboe says. “And I’d say, ‘OK, Mothers, gather up your daughters. Here comes Art Laboe and his devil music!’ ”

Even early on, Laboe was an innovator. He would get out of the studio and broadcast live from now-defunct Scrivener’s drive-in restaurants in LA. People would sit in their cars, windows rolled down, and shout out requests.

“He understood that cars and music and teenagers go together, especially in Los Angeles,” says Josh Kun, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California.

Kun says the on-air requests — with messages to loved ones serving in the military, or even in prison — have always been the key to Laboe’s appeal.

“He’s recognized that playing songs on the radio is never just about playing songs on the radio,” he says, “that playing songs is about building communities and it’s about connecting to the most intimate, most painful, most emotional aspects of people’s lives.”

Over the decades, Laboe has worked as concert promoter, helped produce new artists, and was one of the first people to sell compilation albums with his “Oldies But Goodies” series.

But on one station or another, Laboe has remained on the radio — and stayed with his listeners.

Among LA Latinos, Laboe An ‘Icon’

Somewhat surprisingly, this 88-year-old Armenian-American has his most ardent following among Latinos.

A group called the South El Monte Arts Posse has been gathering oral histories and photos of the city’s early rock ‘n’ roll scene and its connections in Mexican-American life. Laboe is part of that tradition.

Rubén Guevara, a 71-year-old musician, attended a recent event held by the Arts Posse. And he says Laboe has provided the soundtrack to a lot of life in Southern California.

Laboe played “music we fell in love to, got married to, raised kids with,” Guevara says. “And he became, you know, a really constant family member.”

Luie Delgado, 36, says that Laboe has listened, without judgment, to people of all backgrounds, “taking messages and names and names that were familiar, names that were even in Spanish.”

He says what makes Laboe’s show powerful, is “just knowing that you were being heard.”

No Plans To Retire

Laboe says it’s “difficult” to think of leaving the business: “I’m still a radio guy,” he says.

It’s even harder for his fans to think of him going off the air.

Susan Straight, a writer and professor at the University of California, Riverside, says she grew up listening to Laboe and still calls in with her own dedications.

“I think of him as timeless,” she says. “And I have to confess, I have never, ever thought about there being a night, when Art Laboe’s voice wasn’t there.”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

As former NPR broadcaster Paul Brown adds in an appreciation he prepared for Morning Edition, Seeger’s tools “were his songs, his voice, his enthusiasm and his musical instruments.”

The songs he’ll be long remembered for include “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

Paul is not just a newsman, but also a banjo player himself. Here’s more from his look back at Seeger’s long life:

“Seeger came by his beliefs honestly. His father, Charles Seeger, was an ethnomusicologist and pioneering folklorist whose left wing views got him in trouble at the University of California. Charles Seeger introduced his son to some of the most important musicians of the Depression era, including Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. Seeger and Guthrie became fast friends, though they didn’t agree on all things. They crisscrossed the country performing together. …

“As early as 1941, they found themselves blacklisted. Seeger was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Stalin. …

“Following World War II and service entertaining the troops, Seeger teamed up with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman to form the astonishingly successful folk group The Weavers. …

“If The Weavers hit an emotional and cultural sweet spot in postwar America, the ‘red scare’ quickly soured it. In 1955, Seeger refused to answer questions before Congress about his political beliefs and associations. He was held in contempt and nearly served a jail sentence before charges were finally dropped in 1962 on a technicality.

“But the troubles with Congress finished The Weavers. …

“Shut out of the big gigs, he played coffeehouses, union halls and college campuses to support his family. … He co-founded and wrote for Sing Out, one of the first and most important magazines to grow out of the folk revival. He produced children’s songs and books. But his commitment to causes never waned.

“Seeger sang and marched nationwide for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. In 1968, he went local … but in a big way. Upset at the filth clogging the Hudson River near his home, he spearheaded the building of the sloop Clearwater, which volunteers sailed up and down the Hudson. Politicians and polluters had to take notice.

“For all of his social activism, Seeger said more than once that if he had done nothing more than write his slim book How to Play the Five String Banjo, his life’s work would have been complete. …

“If Pete Seeger didn’t save the world, he certainly did change the lives of millions of people by leading them to sing, to take action and to at least consider his dream of what society could be.”

The New York Times says Seeger’s career “carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.”

And the Times notes that Seeger “was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ’50s and ’60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock.”

Seeger’s influence went well beyond folk music. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which says that in Seeger’s “capable hands, from the ’40s to the present day, a concert isn’t regarded as a one-way proceeding but a group singalong.”

According to The Associated Press, “Seeger’s grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson said his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep around 9:30 p.m. at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been for six days. Family members were with him.”

There’s much more about Seeger in this archive of NPR’s coverage of him over the years.

Update at 11 a.m. ET. Seeger Stood Up For What’s Right, Spoke Out Against What’s Wrong, Obamas Say.

The White House just released this statement from the president:

“Once called ‘America’s tuning fork,’ Pete Seeger believed deeply in the power of song. But more importantly, he believed in the power of community – to stand up for what’s right, speak out against what’s wrong, and move this country closer to the America he knew we could be. Over the years, Pete used his voice — and his hammer — to strike blows for worker’s rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation. And he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Pete’s family and all those who loved him.”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Pete Seeger came by his beliefs honestly. His father, Charles Seeger, was an ethnomusicologist and a pioneering folkorist whose left-wing views got him into trouble at the University of California, Berkeley. Charles Seeger introduced his son to some of the most important musicians of the Depression era — including Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie.

Seeger and Guthrie eventually became fast friends — though they didn’t agree on all things — and crisscrossed the country performing together. Seeger said that as early as 1941, they found themselves blacklisted as communists. Seeger actually was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Josef Stalin.

Following World War II and service entertaining the troops, Seeger teamed up with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman to form the astonishingly successful folk group The Weavers. Ronnie Gilbert said that from the start, Seeger’s performances were transcendent — whether you were on stage with him or in the audience.

“You got the sense that he was saying and singing way beyond the moment that he was in, the place that he was in. Alone on a stage in front of thousands of people … everybody got it, everybody got his passion for music, his passion for being on the stage, making people sing, having people listen to each other’s music. He was a passionate person, and that was what people saw. People absorbed his passion and his ideals,” Gilbert says.

The Weavers’ version of Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene” hit the top of the pop charts in 1950. Other hits followed, including “On Top of Old Smokey,” “So Long (It’s Been Good to Know You)” and “Wimoweh.”

If The Weavers hit an emotional and cultural sweet spot in postwar America, the Red Scare quickly soured it. Seeger refused to answer questions before Congress in 1955 about his political beliefs and associations. He was held in contempt and nearly served a jail sentence before charges were finally dropped in 1962 on a technicality.

But his troubles with Congress finished The Weavers as a major touring and recording group, so Seeger went out on his own again. Shut out of the big gigs, he played coffeehouses, union halls and college campuses to support his family. His wife, Toshi, managed his affairs and raised their children in the cabin they had built in Beacon, N.Y.

He co-founded and wrote for Sing Out, one of the first and most important magazines to grow out of the folk revival. He produced children’s songs and books. But his commitment to political and social causes never waned. Seeger sang and marched nationwide for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. As he told NPR in 1971, “Sometimes I think [about] that old saying,’The pen is mightier than the sword.’ Well, my one hope is the guitar is gonna be mightier than the bomb.”

In 1968 he went local, but, of course, in a big way. Upset at the filth clogging the Hudson River near his home, he spearheaded the building of the Sloop Clearwater, which volunteers sailed up and down the Hudson. Politicians and polluters had to take notice. Seeger, not surprisingly, saw a larger purpose: “Bringing these people together, all these people, is the essential thing, and this is what the Clearwater almost miraculously has started to do on the Hudson,” he said.

For all of his social activism, Seeger said more than once that if he had done nothing more than write his slim book How to Play the 5-String Banjo, his life’s work would have been complete. Seeger’s grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger plays banjo and performed with his grandfather. He says the paperback, which is chock-full of chords and techniques, is a challenge.

“It’s not a thick book but it’s thick stuff. He doesn’t really explain it too well. It’s sort of quick, it’s got a little diagram, ‘Here’s how you do it.’ But it’s great. It’s an awesome resource. I have a copy,” Rodriguez Seeger says.

Not just through his books but also through his sheer force of presence, Seeger became a model for younger folk musicians. Singer and songwriter Tom Paxton said he learned invaluable lessons from Seeger about how to reach an audience. “Look ’em in the eye. Make a gesture of inclusion, which he did all the time. And above all, have a chorus,” Paxton says. “So I learned from Pete to have something for them to sing.”

Bringing people together and getting them to sing out may be one of Pete Seeger’s greatest legacies. But when it came to saving the world, Tao Rodriguez Seeger says, his grandfather ultimately seemed to question whether the guitar was mightier than the sword.

“[It] troubled him, troubled him deeply that technology was so advanced but our emotional state was so inadequate to cope, that with a push of a button, in a fit of rage, we could wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth. And he really wanted to fix that and always felt like he failed,” Rodriguez Seeger says.

But if Pete Seeger didn’t save the world, he certainly did change the lives of millions of people by leading them to sing, to take action and to at least consider his dream of what society could be.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.