Chris Strachwitz
Encyclopedia
Chris Strachwitz is a German
-born American
record label
executive and record producer
. He is the founder and president of Arhoolie Records
, which he established in 1960 and which became one of the leading label
s recording and issuing blues
, Cajun
, norteño
and other forms of roots music
from the US and elsewhere in the world.
Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz, in Gross Reichenau, Lower Silesia
, then within Germany
and now known as Bogaczów
, Poland
. His family were aristocratic farm owners, with some American antecedents; Strachwitz's mother's grandfather was US Senator Francis G. Newlands
. In 1945, under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement
after World War II
, he and his family were among the millions of German-speaking people forcibly resettled
to the west of the Oder-Neisse line
which became the eastern boundary of Germany. Strachwitz's family settled temporarily with relatives in Braunschweig
, in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany, where he first heard swing music played on Armed Forces Radio.
In 1947, the family emigrated to the United States, moving first to Reno, Nevada
, and then to Santa Barbara, California
. Strachwitz attended Cate School in nearby Carpinteria. He became interested in jazz
after seeing the movie New Orleans
, starring Billie Holiday
and Louis Armstrong
, and began collecting jazz records. He stated in a 2010 interview:
After graduating from Cate in 1951, he attended Pomona College
in Claremont
, and starting visiting jazz clubs in Los Angeles
as well as rhythm and blues
shows featuring Lightnin' Hopkins
, Howlin' Wolf
and others. He began taping the radio broadcasts and live shows of his friend, jazz musician Frank Demond
, before enrolling in 1952 at UC Berkeley
, where he booked jazz and R&B performers as entertainment at football games.
He became an United States citizen, and was drafted
into the US Army in 1954, being stationed in Salzburg
, Austria
, from where he continued to see touring jazz shows. After finishing his service he returned to Berkeley, completing his studies in engineering
, mathematics
and physics
, and then taking a degree in political science
and an advanced degree in secondary education
in 1960. At the same time, he continued to develop his technical skills, learning from established producer Bob Geddins
and through recording San Francisco street musician Jesse Fuller
, jazz saxophonist
Sonny Simmons
and others. He also worked as a high school teacher in Los Gatos
for three years from 1959.
, intending to visit his hero, Lightnin' Hopkins. Although unable to record Hopkins at the time due to lack of money and equipment, he resolved to return to the area the following year. With the proceeds from trading in 78 rpm records, he bought new recording equipment, set up the Arhoolie label, and in 1960 returned to Texas where, with the assistance of "Mack" McCormick, he recorded Mance Lipscomb
for the first time. Lipscomb's album, Texas Songster and Sharecropper, became Arhoolie's first release in November 1960, in an edition of 250 copies. The name "Arhoolie" was suggested by McCormick, deriving from a word for a field holler
. Strachwitz also recorded "Black Ace" Turner
, "Li'l Son" Jackson
and "Whistling" Alex Moore
on the same trip, and later in the year recorded Big Joe Williams
and Mercy Dee Walton in California.
He also began reissuing archive material, both of R&B singers such as Big Joe Turner
and Lowell Fulson
who had recorded for the defunct Swingtime label, and old country and western recordings on his Old Timey label, started in 1962. He stopped teaching that year and moved back to Berkeley
, to devote himself to developing the record business. He also continued travelling to make field recordings of blues musicians, notably Mississippi Fred McDowell
- who he first recorded in 1964 - Juke Boy Bonner
, K. C. Douglas
, and Clifton Chenier
. From 1965, he also hosted a Sunday afternoon music program on Pacifica Radio
's KPFA
-FM in Berkeley, California
, which ran until 1995.
In 1966, his friend Ed Denson introduced him to a local band, Country Joe and the Fish
, who were active in anti-Vietnam war protests at Berkeley. Strachwitz recorded the band singing "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die", and gained a share of the song's publishing rights. Eventually, royalties from the song - particularly its appearance in the Woodstock Festival
movie
and soundtrack album
- helped subsidise the Arhoolie label, and enabled Strachwitz to buy a building in San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, California
as the label's headquarters. Strachwitz also won royalties for Fred McDowell from the Rolling Stones' performance of his song "You Gotta Move
" on their Sticky Fingers
album.
During the 1970s, Strachwitz continued to record blues musicians, including Big Joe Duskin
, Charlie Musselwhite
, Big Mama Thornton
, Elizabeth Cotton
, and Robben Ford
, as well as Cajun and zydeco
performers such as Clifton Chenier, Lawrence Ardoin and John Delafose. He also continued to secure the rights to release archive blues material such as that by Snooks Eaglin
and Robert Pete Williams
. In the 1980s and 1990s, he continued to develop Arhoolie as a distributor of smaller independent blues labels, and an importer of jazz and blues releases on European labels.
He also increasingly focused attention on Mexican
and, specifically, norteño
music, which he had long admired, building up what is believed to be the largest private collection of Mexican-American and Mexican music. The first such album on Arhoolie was Conjuntos Norteños, by Los Pinguinos del Norte, released in 1970, but one of his biggest successes came with Flaco Jiménez
, whose album Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio won a Grammy Award
in 1986. With cinematographer
Les Blank
, he also made two documentaries about the music in the mid 1970s, Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazon. Another of Strachwitz's discoveries, and one of his biggest commercial successes, was Cajun musician Michael Doucet
and his group BeauSoleil
.
.
In 1995 he formed the Arhoolie Foundation, "to document, preserve, present and disseminate authentic traditional and regional vernacular music". The Foundation owns the Chris Strachwitz Frontera Collection, comprising about 44,000 commercially issued phonograph records of Mexican-American and Mexican vernacular material, issued between around 1906 and the 1990s, which are now in the process of being digitised. In 2009, the collection was opened to the public at the Chicano Studies Research Center of the University of California, Los Angeles
.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
executive and record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
. He is the founder and president of Arhoolie Records
Arhoolie Records
Arhoolie Records is a small record label run by Chris Strachwitz. The label was founded by Strachwitz in 1960 as a way for him to record and publish previously obscure "down home blues" artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Snooks Eaglin and Bill Gaither...
, which he established in 1960 and which became one of the leading label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
s recording and issuing blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, Cajun
Cajun music
Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Cajun music is often mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based, Cajun-influenced zydeco form, both of Acadiana origin...
, norteño
Norteño (music)
Norteño , also norteña or conjunto, is a genre of Mexican music. The accordion and the bajo sexto are norteño's most characteristic instruments. The norteño genre is popular in both Mexico and the United States, especially among the Mexican community...
and other forms of roots music
Roots music
Roots music can refer to several styles or trends in music:* Americana * Folk music* Roots of hip hop, the conditions which led to creation of the hip hop genre* Roots reggae...
from the US and elsewhere in the world.
Early life
He was born Christian Alexander Maria, GrafGraf
Graf is a historical German noble title equal in rank to a count or a British earl...
Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz, in Gross Reichenau, Lower Silesia
Province of Lower Silesia
The Province of Lower Silesia was a province of the Free State of Prussia from 1919 to 1945. Between 1938 and 1941 it was reunited with Upper Silesia as the Silesia Province. The capital of Lower Silesia was Breslau...
, then within Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and now known as Bogaczów
Bogaczów, Lower Silesian Voivodeship
Bogaczów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Męcinka, within Jawor County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Prior to 1945 it was in Germany and it was called Gross Reichenau....
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. His family were aristocratic farm owners, with some American antecedents; Strachwitz's mother's grandfather was US Senator Francis G. Newlands
Francis G. Newlands
Francis Griffith Newlands was a United States Representative and Senator from Nevada.-Early life:Newlands was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on August 28, 1846...
. In 1945, under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement
Potsdam Agreement
The Potsdam Agreement was the Allied plan of tripartite military occupation and reconstruction of Germany—referring to the German Reich with its pre-war 1937 borders including the former eastern territories—and the entire European Theatre of War territory...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he and his family were among the millions of German-speaking people forcibly resettled
Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland was the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II...
to the west of the Oder-Neisse line
Oder-Neisse line
The Oder–Neisse line is the border between Germany and Poland which was drawn in the aftermath of World War II. The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, and meets the Baltic Sea west of the seaport cities of Szczecin and Świnoujście...
which became the eastern boundary of Germany. Strachwitz's family settled temporarily with relatives in Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
, in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany, where he first heard swing music played on Armed Forces Radio.
In 1947, the family emigrated to the United States, moving first to Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada
Reno is the county seat of Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The city has a population of about 220,500 and is the most populous Nevada city outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area...
, and then to Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
. Strachwitz attended Cate School in nearby Carpinteria. He became interested in jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
after seeing the movie New Orleans
New Orleans (1947 film)
New Orleans is a 1947 musical drama featuring Billie Holiday as a singing maid and Louis Armstrong as a bandleader; supporting players Holiday and Armstrong perform together and portray a couple becoming romantically involved...
, starring Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
and Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, and began collecting jazz records. He stated in a 2010 interview:
"The rhythms haunted me.... I'd hear all this stuff on the radio, and it just knocked me over. I thought this was absolutely the most wonderful thing I had ever heard."
After graduating from Cate in 1951, he attended Pomona College
Pomona College
Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
in Claremont
Claremont, California
Claremont is a small affluent college town in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The population as of the 2010 census is 34,926. Claremont is known for its seven higher-education institutions, its...
, and starting visiting jazz clubs in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
as well as rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
shows featuring Lightnin' Hopkins
Lightnin' Hopkins
Sam John Hopkins better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas...
, Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
and others. He began taping the radio broadcasts and live shows of his friend, jazz musician Frank Demond
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Preservation Hall Jazz Band is the name for numerous groups of Dixieland Jazz and traditional jazz bands at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, Louisiana, and on tours as organized by the Preservation Hall...
, before enrolling in 1952 at UC Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he booked jazz and R&B performers as entertainment at football games.
He became an United States citizen, and was drafted
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the US Army in 1954, being stationed in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, from where he continued to see touring jazz shows. After finishing his service he returned to Berkeley, completing his studies in engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, and then taking a degree in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and an advanced degree in secondary education
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
in 1960. At the same time, he continued to develop his technical skills, learning from established producer Bob Geddins
Bob Geddins
Robert L. "Bob" Geddins was an American San Francisco Bay Area blues and rhythm and blues musician and record producer....
and through recording San Francisco street musician Jesse Fuller
Jesse Fuller
Jesse Fuller was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues".-Early life:...
, jazz saxophonist
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
Sonny Simmons
Sonny Simmons
Huey "Sonny" Simmons is an American jazz musician.He grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing the english horn. At age 16 he took up the alto saxophone, which became his primary instrument...
and others. He also worked as a high school teacher in Los Gatos
Los Gatos, California
The Town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains...
for three years from 1959.
Arhoolie Records
In summer 1959, he made a trip to Houston, TexasHouston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
, intending to visit his hero, Lightnin' Hopkins. Although unable to record Hopkins at the time due to lack of money and equipment, he resolved to return to the area the following year. With the proceeds from trading in 78 rpm records, he bought new recording equipment, set up the Arhoolie label, and in 1960 returned to Texas where, with the assistance of "Mack" McCormick, he recorded Mance Lipscomb
Mance Lipscomb
Mance Lipscomb was an American blues singer, guitarist and songster. Born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, United States, he as a youth took the name of 'Mance' from a friend of his oldest brother Charlie .-Biography:Lipscomb was born April 9, 1895 to an ex-slave father from Alabama and...
for the first time. Lipscomb's album, Texas Songster and Sharecropper, became Arhoolie's first release in November 1960, in an edition of 250 copies. The name "Arhoolie" was suggested by McCormick, deriving from a word for a field holler
Field holler
Field Hollers as well as work songs were African American styles of music from before the American Civil War, this style of music is closely related to spirituals in the sense that it expressed religious feelings and included subtle hints about ways of escaping slavery, among other things...
. Strachwitz also recorded "Black Ace" Turner
Black Ace
Black Ace was the most frequently used stage name of the American Texas blues musician, Babe Kyro Lemon Turner , who was also known as B.K...
, "Li'l Son" Jackson
Melvin Jackson
Melvin "Lil' Son" Jackson was an American blues guitarist. He was a contemporary of Lightnin' Hopkins.-Biography:...
and "Whistling" Alex Moore
Whistlin' Alex Moore
Whistlin' Alex Moore was an American blues pianist, singer and whistler. He is best remembered for his recordings of "Across The Atlantic Ocean" and "Black Eyed Peas and Hog Jowls."-Early life:...
on the same trip, and later in the year recorded Big Joe Williams
Big Joe Williams
Joseph Lee Williams , billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar...
and Mercy Dee Walton in California.
He also began reissuing archive material, both of R&B singers such as Big Joe Turner
Big Joe Turner
Big Joe Turner was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and...
and Lowell Fulson
Lowell Fulson
Lowell Fulson was a big-voiced blues guitarist and songwriter, in the West Coast blues tradition. Fulson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He also recorded for business reasons as Lowell Fullsom and Lowell Fulsom...
who had recorded for the defunct Swingtime label, and old country and western recordings on his Old Timey label, started in 1962. He stopped teaching that year and moved back to Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, to devote himself to developing the record business. He also continued travelling to make field recordings of blues musicians, notably Mississippi Fred McDowell
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Fred McDowell known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American Hill country blues singer and guitar player.-Career:...
- who he first recorded in 1964 - Juke Boy Bonner
Juke Boy Bonner
Weldon H. Philip Bonner, better known as Juke Boy Bonner was an American blues singer, harmonica player, and guitarist. He was influenced by Lightnin' Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, and Slim Harpo...
, K. C. Douglas
K. C. Douglas
K. C. Douglas was an American blues singer and guitarist.-Career:Born in Sharon, Mississippi, Douglas was a rural blues stylist in the San Francisco/Oakland area of California. Douglas was influenced by Tommy Johnson, whose "Canned Heat Blues" he adapted on his album, Big Road Blues...
, and Clifton Chenier
Clifton Chenier
Clifton Chenier , a Creole French-speaking native of Opelousas, Louisiana, was an eminent performer and recording artist of Zydeco, which arose from Cajun and Creole music, with R&B, jazz, and blues influences. He played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983...
. From 1965, he also hosted a Sunday afternoon music program on Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...
's KPFA
KPFA
KPFA is a listener-funded progressive talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on-the-air April 15 1949, as the first Pacifica Station...
-FM in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, which ran until 1995.
In 1966, his friend Ed Denson introduced him to a local band, Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish
Country Joe and the Fish was a rock band most widely known for musical protests against the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1971, and also regarded as a seminal influence to psychedelic rock.-History:...
, who were active in anti-Vietnam war protests at Berkeley. Strachwitz recorded the band singing "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die", and gained a share of the song's publishing rights. Eventually, royalties from the song - particularly its appearance in the Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
movie
Woodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
and soundtrack album
Woodstock: Music From the Original Soundtrack and More
Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More is the live album of the 1969 Woodstock concert. Originally released on Atlantic Records' Cotillion label as a set of 3 LPs in 1970 , it was re-released as a double CD in 1994. Veteran producer Eddie Kramer was the sound engineer during the...
- helped subsidise the Arhoolie label, and enabled Strachwitz to buy a building in San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, California
El Cerrito, California
-Transportation:The city's primary transportation infrastructure consists of the El Cerrito Plaza and El Cerrito del Norte BART stations along with several local bus lines, operated by AC Transit, providing access to the surrounding area and the nearby cities of Albany, Berkeley and Richmond...
as the label's headquarters. Strachwitz also won royalties for Fred McDowell from the Rolling Stones' performance of his song "You Gotta Move
You Gotta Move (song)
"You Gotta Move" is a song written by Fred McDowell and Rev. Gary Davis. Being a well-known song of McDowell's as "You Got to Move", it was most famously recorded by the British rock and roll band The Rolling Stones and is featured on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.The song has a haunting and raw...
" on their Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers
-Personnel:The Rolling Stones*Mick Jagger – lead vocals, acoustic guitar on "Dead Flowers", electric guitar on "Sway", percussion*Keith Richards – electric guitar, six & twelve string acoustic guitar, backing vocals...
album.
During the 1970s, Strachwitz continued to record blues musicians, including Big Joe Duskin
Big Joe Duskin
Big Joe Duskin was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist. He is best known for his debut album, Cincinnati Stomp , and the tracks "Well, Well Baby" and "I Met a Girl Named Martha".-Biography:...
, Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite
Charlie Musselwhite is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American heritage...
, Big Mama Thornton
Big Mama Thornton
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was an American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record the hit song "Hound Dog" in 1952. The song was #1 on the Billboard R&B charts for seven weeks in 1953. The B-side was "They Call Me Big Mama," and the single sold almost two million...
, Elizabeth Cotton
Elizabeth Cotton
Elizabeth Cotton may refer to:*Elizabeth Hope, nee Cotton* Elizabeth Cotten, singer...
, and Robben Ford
Robben Ford
Robben Ford is an American blues, jazz and rock guitarist.-Biography:Ford was born in Woodlake, California, United States, but raised in Ukiah, California, and began playing the saxophone at age 10, picking up the guitar at age 13...
, as well as Cajun and zydeco
Zydeco
Zydeco is a form of uniquely American roots or folk music. It evolved in southwest Louisiana in the early 19th century from forms of "la la" Creole music...
performers such as Clifton Chenier, Lawrence Ardoin and John Delafose. He also continued to secure the rights to release archive blues material such as that by Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin, born Fird Eaglin, Jr. , was a New Orleans-based guitarist and singer. He was also referred to as Blind Snooks Eaglin in his early years....
and Robert Pete Williams
Robert Pete Williams
Robert Pete Williams was an American Louisiana blues musician. His music characteristically employed unconventional blues tunings and structures, and his songs are often about the time he served in prison...
. In the 1980s and 1990s, he continued to develop Arhoolie as a distributor of smaller independent blues labels, and an importer of jazz and blues releases on European labels.
He also increasingly focused attention on Mexican
Music of Mexico
The music of Mexico is very diverse and features a wide range of different musical styles. It has been influenced by a variety of cultures, most notably indigenous Mexican and European, since the Late Middle Ages...
and, specifically, norteño
Norteño (music)
Norteño , also norteña or conjunto, is a genre of Mexican music. The accordion and the bajo sexto are norteño's most characteristic instruments. The norteño genre is popular in both Mexico and the United States, especially among the Mexican community...
music, which he had long admired, building up what is believed to be the largest private collection of Mexican-American and Mexican music. The first such album on Arhoolie was Conjuntos Norteños, by Los Pinguinos del Norte, released in 1970, but one of his biggest successes came with Flaco Jiménez
Flaco Jiménez
Leonardo "Flaco" Jiménez is a Tejano music accordionist from San Antonio, Texas. Jiménez's father, Santiago Jiménez Sr. was a pioneer of conjunto music. He began performing with his father at age seven and recording at age fifteen, as a member of Los Caporales...
, whose album Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
in 1986. With cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Les Blank
Les Blank
Les Blank is an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians....
, he also made two documentaries about the music in the mid 1970s, Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazon. Another of Strachwitz's discoveries, and one of his biggest commercial successes, was Cajun musician Michael Doucet
Michael Doucet
Michael Doucet is a Cajun fiddler, singer and songwriter who founded the Cajun band BeauSoleil from Lafayette, Louisiana.In 2005 Doucet was one of 12 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA award, which recognizes artistic excellence, cultural...
and his group BeauSoleil
Beausoleil
BeauSoleil is an American musical group specializing in Cajun music. Based in Lafayette, Louisiana, the group members are brothers Michael Doucet and David Doucet , Jimmy Breaux , Billy Ware , Tommy Alesi , and Mitchell Reed .-Band history:Founded in 1975, BeauSoleil BeauSoleil (French, beautiful...
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Awards and legacy
In 1993, Strachwitz received a lifetime achievement award from the Blues Symposium for his role in preserving the blues, and in 1999 was inducted as a non-performing member of the Blues Hall of FameBlues Hall of Fame
The Blues Hall of Fame is a listing of people who have significantly contributed to blues music. Started in 1980 by the Blues Foundation, it honors those who have performed, recorded, or documented blues.-1980:*Big Bill Broonzy*Willie Dixon*John Lee Hooker...
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In 1995 he formed the Arhoolie Foundation, "to document, preserve, present and disseminate authentic traditional and regional vernacular music". The Foundation owns the Chris Strachwitz Frontera Collection, comprising about 44,000 commercially issued phonograph records of Mexican-American and Mexican vernacular material, issued between around 1906 and the 1990s, which are now in the process of being digitised. In 2009, the collection was opened to the public at the Chicano Studies Research Center of the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
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