Danube Blues

Vienna has capitulated to the jukebox. It was in Viennese restaurants that Johann Strauss Jr. first played some of his great waltzes; gypsy fiddlers roamed Viennese bars, while in quiet cafes the only music (no less attractive in its own way) used to be the rustle of turning newspapers and the click of spoons scooping the whipped cream from the coffee cups. Now, everywhere, jukeboxes are going full blast. Vienna has 400, all bought during the past 14 months, the rest of the country has 300 more, and jukebox salesmen (one of whom is a count, of course) report that they cannot keep up with growing demand.

Except for some indestructible old favorites, sentimental Viennese oldies are supplanted by mambos, boogie-woogie and other jazz. Teen-agers sit for hours, nursing their beers and feeding schillings to the mechanical monsters. Current hits: Three Coins in the Fountain, Ko Ko Mo and I Love Paris (in the springtime). There are those who deplore the jukebox (which is known as "Musikautomat") as further evidence that civilization is in schrecklich shape. But Vienna's present-day songwriters (not a Strauss among them) are jazzing up older tunes for jukebox use and, in the process, are demonstrating that they can be fairly schrecklich on their own. Current sample:

Wie in an Guglhupf zwa Zibeben So sitzen wir beinand' im Leben (Like two raisins in a coffee cake We sit side by side in life.)

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