Last month, one of the great explorers and producers of American vernacular music, Chris Strachwitz, passed away. He was 91 years old. He was the founder and co-owner (with Tom Diamant) of Arhoolie Records which since its first release in 1960, Texas Sharecropper And Songster by Texan bluesman Mance Lipscomb, has put out an astonishing 44,000 records.
In 2016, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings purchased Arhoolie. More than 350 albums released since 1960 were added to Folkways catalogue, and the music they presented included down home blues, folk, jazz, country, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, Mexican-American (see the Frontera Collection at Smithsonian), klezmer and World Music. Much of the Arhoolie catalogue has now been digitised and reissued on CD.
Born in Germany in 1931, Strachwitz emigrated to the USA in 1947 and studied science and engineering, then politics. He quickly discovered jazz and began collecting records -- he had one of the largest private collections of records in the US and developed the largest archive of Mexican-American music in the country.
After hearing a recording by bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins, he was immediately taken with the genre, and this led him to discover other important regional American music -- Cajun, zydeco, hillbilly, Tex-Mex and gospel. Eventually, he began to make trips to the American South and made field recordings; some of the earliest genres he came across included zydeco, which he saw in Louisiana house parties, small bars and clubs. He had no idea what this was but discovered it was the music of Louisiana blacks and creoles, who sang in French creole, and he learned that Cajun, more fiddle based, was in contrast the music of Louisiana's white population.
Strachwitz always preferred to make field recordings, and he noted in the 2013 documentary It Ain't No Mouse Music that he liked the fact that much of the music he recorded in those early years was for dancing and having a good time. In the same film, one commentator called him an "obsessive sonic sleuth". The name Arhoolie, he also revealed, came from an explanation by Lipscomb, who said that one tracks was an arhoolie; by which he meant a field holler (a work song and one of main roots of the blues).
Through his label, Strachwitz promoted the music of Bukka White, Big Mama Thornton, Lightin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi Fred McDowell (of I Do Not Play No Rock'N'Roll fame), Flaco Jimenez, Michel Doucet, and later The Savoy Family Band, the Magnolia Sisters and the Pine Leaf Boys.
I have written in previous columns about how Ry Cooder's early records introduced me to regional American genres -- he released albums influenced by Tex Mex (Flaco Jimenez), gospel and Hawaiian music -- and it was through him that I became aware of Jimenez and the Arhoolie label. It was the door that opened a whole new world of music I had no idea existed.
Another important figure was Les Blank and the films he made on zydeco and Tex Mex music in the 1960s and 1970s. He formed a production company with Blank, Brazos Films, which produced several documentary films including Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazon. (Interested readers should look out for the German film Down Home Music: A Journey Through The Heartland 1963, directed by Dietrich Wawzyn.)
Strachwitz's influence on contemporary music and on promoting vernacular music was very important. For instance, in 1965 he produced the first Berkeley Blues Festival, which featured artists he had recorded for Arhoolie including Big Mama Thornton and Chuck Berry. The following year, he introduced the King of Zydeco, Clifton Chenier. These artists also joined European tours, starting in 1962, which introduced them to European audiences (and fuelled a blues boom that influenced rockers such as John Mayall and The Rolling Stones).
I have quite a few Smithsonian releases from the mid-to-late-1970s, mainly from the worldwide boom in zydeco and Cajun music which was almost single-handedly created by Strachwitz. I still have well-worn albums like Chenier's Bon Ton Roulez (a shortened form of the French Creole laissez les bons temps rouler, or let the good times roll). I quite often spin zydeco at my DJ nights, which goes well with New Orleans R&B and swing. One night a few years ago, I played Ti Na Na by Chenier, which is a fast tempo dancer. A young American came to the DJ booth and asked where this "amazing" music came from; he was shocked to learn that it was from Louisiana, and that the instrument featured was a button accordion (Cajun in contrast uses the bigger, piano key accordion).
Those interested in what is now called American roots music, should go to the Smithsonian site and browse some of the amazing music that this immigrant to the USA produced and promoted. RIP Chris Strachwitz -- the man who Let the Good Times Roll. Bon Ton Roulez.
Information and albums released by Arhoolie can be found at folkways.si.edu, at the Down Home Music record store in California, downhomemusic.com, and at the Arhoolie Foundation, arhoolie.org. The full discography of Arhoolie Records at Folkways can be found at folkways.si.edu/arhoolie/discography.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
