[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska

Fairbanks, Alaska: [circa 1950s-1960s].

Sold

Hardcover. Oblong quarto. Measuring 12½" x 10". Red cloth album. Contains 101 gelatin silver images mostly measuring around 5" x 3½", some with captions. Good album with tape repairs and creasing with near fine photographs.

A photo album likely belonging to an African-American musician who performed with Roscoe Holland in Fairbanks, Alaska in the 1950s and '60s. Holland was a blues vocalist and pianist about whom little is known, other than that he recorded for Dootone Records label in the 1960s. Prior to that, he performed at Club Playboy, and likely at other clubs in the area. Advertisements for Club Playboy appear in newspapers around the year 1960, advertising Holland as "Fairbanks' Finest Entertainer," performing in an informal atmosphere, with "cocktails served by pretty Elaine'' as well as "many other surprises," a possible reference to the presence of strippers at the club, as the album contains a revealing photograph of a stripper, inscribed "to greatest friend of 'Playboy' from Anita Dave."

The album contains photographs of performers, performances, parties, and dances, many of which took place in the same dive bar, shown both full and empty, complete with slot machine and pinup calendars on the walls, as well as advertisements for available hunting and fishing tours. One image of a saxophonist is captioned at "Blinkey's," and another shows the men outside the Bell and Whistle, both in Fairbanks. Most of the patrons appear to have been African-American servicemen stationed at the nearby Air Force base. Also shown in many of these images are a group of African-American women, either girlfriends or performers at the club. The rest of the album contains street scenes of Fairbanks, including photos of Alaskan Natives, a military parade, and local businesses, including a collection of photos of the "Snow White Laundry," with both exterior and interior shots, the latter showing white women cleaning clothes. There are also images of the African-American band members and their girlfriends lounging in dormitory style housing or posing on the outskirts of town by the air base or in front of scenic mountains.

A nice collection of images depicting African-American nightlife in Alaska in the late 1950s and early 1960s.


Item #445903

item image

Item #445903 [Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska
[Photo Album]: African-American Nightclub Scene Alaska