Blues came to Yukon in the blood and marrow of soldiers from the Mississippi Delta—the soldiers of the 93rd Engineering Regiment. After all, the blues were born in the Delta too. On a wall in the Carcross Depot today hangs a photo of a large group of black soldiers in front of the 1942 depot. Many of the men hold musical instruments.
Carcross–North Country Gateway
Lt. Mortimer Squires who served as regimental motor officer in 1942, remembered the soldiers spontaneously breaking into song—sometimes forming into quartets or breaking out a guitar or harmonica.
And Millie Jones remembered the men and their music.
Ten-year-old Millie had spent her life in Carcross—Mom cooked at the hotel, Dad and Grandpa worked for the railroad. Soldiers had ridden the trains through town on their way to Whitehorse for weeks, but one day the train stopped and began disgorging soldiers. Millie ran, bursting with excitement, to the depot with her schoolmates to see the “black white men”.
The army wouldn’t allow the black men inside the hotel. They couldn’t even come to the front door. But they came to the back door to request drinking water. And Millie’s mother supplemented that refreshment with fresh baked bread. Sometimes with cookies.
Helping to clear the dining room one evening, carrying a stack of dishes to the kitchen, Mille heard the most incredible sound she’d ever heard coming from the back porch. She aimed the stack of dishes at the table; missed; didn’t even notice.
Someone had rolled the piano out to the porch where a black soldier brought sounds out of it that Millie had never heard before. And other soldiers gathered around with other instruments—guitar, trumpet, banjo…
In her living room in Whitehorse, seventy years after the fact, Millie’s face shines at this memory from her girlhood. Asked, somewhat hesitantly, whether she remembered the name of the tune, she flashes a broad grin and, without hesitation, says “Pistol Packing Mama”.
More on the song Pistol Packin’ Mama