38th Annual ARSC/SAM
Conference (Cleveland, Ohio, March 10-14, 2004)
SAM 2004 Honorary Member
Be sure to attend the special session featuring Chris Strachwitz on
Saturday, March 13 at 3:30 p.m.
Society
for American Music 2004 Honorary Member
Chris Strachwitz
The president of the Arhoolie Records label, folklorist and producer
Chris Strachwitz was among the most prominent and influential champions
of global roots music; initially focusing primarily on American traditions
including the blues, Cajun, Tejano, zydeco, country and jazz, he later
branched out to explore music from throughout the world, preserving
our shared cultural heritage for future generations to explore. Born
July 1, 1931 in Gross Reichenau, Germany, Strachwitz relocated to the
U.S. in 1947, and began collecting 78 rpm recordings a short time later.
After first becoming obsessed with New Orleans jazz, his interests quickly
expanded into country, gospel, and Mexican ranchera music. While attending
Pomona College during the early 1950s, Strachwitz bought his first tape
recorder, documenting radio programs and live performances by the school
jazz band; he later met record producer Bob Geddins, learning from him
how to make proper recordings.
After finishing up a stint in the U.S. Army, Strachwitz settled in
the Los Gatos, California area in 1956 and began a teaching career.
He decided to form his own label in 1959, the year he made his first
trip to the American South and met his idol, Lightnin' Hopkins. Although
his plans to capture Hopkins during a live juke joint date never materialized,
Strachwitz soon made his first recordings of Mance Lipscomb, issuing
the LP Texas Sharecropper and Songster in an edition of 250 on November
3, 1960. The name Arhoolie was suggested by friend Mack McCormick and
inspired by "hoolie," a word apparently synonymous with a
field holler. A subsequent research trip led to Strachwitz's first meetings
with Black Ace, Li'l Son Jackson and Alex Moore, all of whom he recorded;
he quit teaching in 1962 and scraped out a living selling Arhoolie releases,
with interest in the label buoyed by the folk music boom of the early
1960s.
Several years later, in exchange for recording the "I Feel Like
I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" for Country Joe and the Fish, Strachwitz
retained 50 percent of the song's publishing rights; its subsequent
use on the soundtrack of the film Woodstock made him a great deal of
money, with the profits funneled into purchasing the El Cerrito, California
building which served as Arhoolie's home for the next several decades.
Strachwitz moved on to record material by Mississippi Fred McDowell,
Clifton Chenier and Flaco Jiminez, whose Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio LP
won the label a Grammy award. Another of Arhoolie's greatest discoveries
was Michael Doucet and his Cajun group Beausoleil, long one of the company's
best sellers. In addition to putting out dozens of new roots music records
annually, in 1976 Strachwitz moved into other media, teaming with filmmaker
Les Blank for the documentary Chulas Fronteras. Under Strachwitz's guidance,
Arhoolie continued to prosper throughout the years which followed, its
continuing role in the preservation of "down home music" assured.
-- Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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