The first commercial radio station in the territory was Fairbanks’ KFAR “From the Top of the World to You”. It reached the air on October 1, 1939. Large business interests had had their own stations, but they were generally used for keeping in contact over the great distances and extensive use of these airwaves for public or private entertainment had been limited. KFAR subscribed to the Trans Radio Press that transmitted news in high-speed code of 40-50 words per minute that then had to be manually copied as well as local news and special features that included music. Satellite would come to Alaska much later. The number of commercial radio stations in the territory increased slowly during the early 40s because the population base was so meager. It was, however, radio that brought the music of the 40s and 50s to the majority of Alaska’s listeners for the first time.
Public broadcasting began in Alaska in 1962 when KUAC, an FM station licensed to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks began broadcasting. In 1970 legislation created the Alaska Educational (later Public) Broadcasting Commission and it now over sees public radio as well as television stations statewide. Public broadcasting in Alaska is locally owned and operated and the types of music featured on these stations reflect the preferences of each locality. There are still many areas within the state with listener bases so small that commercial stations are totally absent.
Dog sled, ship, rail, and plane remained the primary methods of travel within Alaska until early 1942, when an anticipated Japanese invasion of the western Aleutians prompted President Roosevelt to order the building of a military road northwest through Canada to Alaska.
Listen to: The Alaska Highway(3:52)
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Only twenty months later, the Alaska Highway (the Alcan or Alaska-Canada), from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, a distance of 1,511 miles (2,437km) was finished. The opportunity to travel to Alaska by car and bus made it possible for more and larger groups of musicians and, indeed, tourists of all interests, to visit Alaska. Yet, many Alaskans felt they were still being treated like a second-class colony and repeatedly requested statehood status throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Finally, on July 7, 1958, Congress voted to admit Alaska into the Union and President Eisenhower signed the proclamation on January 3, 1959.
The practice of writing songs that celebrated in some way the character of the territory and its commemoration of statehood was evident in the number of new compositions about civic pride and longing. Particularly noteworthy are Mildred Risvold’s Alaska My Homeland, (1960), Margaret M. Wheley’s Song of the North, (‘I go where I please, and yet on the breeze comes the Song of the North calling me!’), Alaska Calls, by Carol Beery Davis, and Richard Peters’ North to the Future (both 1967).
The outbreak of WWII had seen the transfer of more than 150,000 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen to Alaska. They brought money and radios with them and the few local stations that there were played the latest popular music from the servicemen’s and women’s home states. Military marching bands in Anchorage, Whittier, Fairbanks, Nome, Sitka, Delta, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor, and the tip of the Aleutians were broken down into smaller ensembles that played both jazz and dinner music in the officers’ and enlisted men’s clubs on base or post theaters. After the war Alaska’s population increased dramatically, almost doubling between 1940 and 1950, because of the number of service personnel who remained or returned after being discharged.
After the war was over, the thriving fishing industry enticed summer workers to join the ranks. In 1946 Johnny Horton (1925-1960), one of the best and most popular honky tonk/rockabilly singers of the 1950s, went to Alaska to be a fisherman and there began to write songs in earnest. Two of his most important songs that helped to make him famous near the end of his life were North to Alaska and his first number one single When its Springtime in Alaska (It’s 40 Below) (composed by Tillman Franks). Horton visited Alaska several times and he was an important influence on resident popular musicians in the Interior. He and other guests joined the locals playing in the bars that stayed open twenty-four hours a day along Fairbanks’ Cushman Street and on the once notorious Second Avenue.
During the 1940's internationally famous Russian pianist Maxim Shapiro traveled to Juneau to give a concert. Favorably impressed with the place, he suggested an ‘Alaska Music Trail’ with a series of four artists or groups yearly. His hand-picked musicians from all over the world contracted concerts in eighteen Alaskan towns including Anchorage, Cordova, Fairbanks, Juneau-Douglas, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Seward, Sitka, Wrangell, and the Canadian communities of Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, Grande Prairies, Kitimat, Prince George, Prince Rupert and Whitehorse. Shapiro hoped that the ‘Music Trail’ would last at least ten years, but he died in the ninth year, and his wife, Jane, carried his project through twenty-five years. While the majority of the musicians were classical performers, there were also jazz, minstrels, and performers of other popular formats over the many years of the Trail’s existence. However, distance and relatively small audiences made a trip to Alaska for many jazz and big bands too costly.
The American military has retained a presence in Alaska throughout the decades. During and after the wars years, besides the very few public and commercial radio stations, military listeners also had access to several hours daily of music funnelled to Alaska via the military’s own stations. Military radio from the ‘lower States’ played the news from 6 to 7 and then contemporary popular music from 7 to 10 PM. The formats were primarily country and western and contemporary groups such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Petula Clarke, and Herman’s Hermits. Former soldiers recently interviewed remember hearing relatively little of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Mick Jagger, and the Beetles in comparison to the Texas and West Virginia influenced rhythm-and-blues and country and western played on the military base stations and available on the jukeboxes in the PXs. There were some visits to Alaska by popular performers, including Buck Owens, one of the soldiers’ favorites. The majority of the Alaskan listening audience was not smitten by the electronic counterculture of the 1960s.
Bibliography of Military Songs
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