A Pop / Disco sort of label, launched by producer / songwriter John Schroeder with Geoff Wilkins and singer Emil D. Zoghby and featuring many productions by him. 'Music Week' of the 20th January 1973 claimed that the first batch of six Alaska singles was to come out on the 16th of February, but in the event they seem to have appeared one by one over the course of several weeks. Alaska records appeared under two different labels and in three different numerical series during the six-and-a-bit years of its existence. It also changed distributors several times. First issues were in an ALA-0 series, and were manufactured and distributed by EMI (1); then, as reported in 'Music Week' of the 12th of April 1975, President took over both of those tasks, and the numbers changed to an ALA-1000 series (2). Demo copies of these singles continued to have EMI-style markings (5). In September 1976 the ALA-1000s changed to ALA-2000s and a new label design was adopted; these changes appear to have coincided with President taking charge of marketing in addition to their current pressing and distribution jobs (3). April 1978 saw Alaska switch to Anchor for distribution; the catalogue numbers remained the same but there were minor variations in the credits on the labels (4). At that point CBS took over manufacture - it manufactured Anchor's own product at that time. Sadly Anchor closed down a year later, and Alaska seems to have expired at much the same time; its final release was marketed by Psycho Records (q.v.). Alaska managed to hit the charts once, with Joy Sarney's, 'Naughty Naughty Naughty' (ALA-2005), in 1977; if you see one of the company's singles in a charity shop, odds-on it's that one. Alaska had a short-lived offshoot, 'Black Bear' (q.v.), the label of which looked like a negative of the first black label.
Address in 1978 : 12, The Quadrangle, Cambridge Square, London W 2.
Copyright 2008 Robert Lyons.