Can't get JSON to render correctly in dropdown

I'm really close on this one, but after looking at about 1000 answers, I'm still not quite getting it.

I'm trying to take JSON from a PHP file and use it to populate a dropdown box.

I'm getting the JSON just fine from the PHP file. It looks like this:

[{"state":"AL"},{"state":"AK"},{"state":"AZ"},{"state":"AR"}]

I can see in the response in developer tools that it's coming over fine. However, when I look at the JSON, line 1 is empty and everything is on line 2. Not sure if that's a problem or not.

On the HTML side, here's what I've got:

<select id="myselect"></select>

and

 $.getJSON('state_get.php', function(data) {               
   $.each(data, function(key, val) {
    $('#myselect').append("<option>"+key.text+"</option>");
})
 });

What I get in my dropdowns are a bunch of options with "undefined". There appear to be one for each JSON value, so something's party right, but not all the way.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, JMR