Chris Strachwitz | |
|---|---|
 Strachwitz in 2000 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Christian Alexander Maria,Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz |
| Born | (1931-07-01)July 1, 1931 Berlin, Germany |
| Died | May 5, 2023(2023-05-05) (aged 91) San Rafael, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Record company executive,record producer |
| Years active | 1952–2023 |
| Website | chrisstrachwitz |
Christian Alexander Maria Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz (/ˈstrɑːkwɪts/;[1] July 1, 1931 – May 5, 2023) was a German-born American record label executive and record producer. He was the founder and president ofArhoolie Records, which he established in 1960 and which became one of the leadinglabels recording and issuingblues,Cajun,norteño, and other forms ofroots music from the United States and elsewhere in the world. Strachwitz despised most commercial music as mouse music.[2]
Strachwitz was born inBerlin, Germany.[3] In 1945, under the terms of thePotsdam Agreement afterWorld War II, he and his family were among the millions ofGerman-speaking people forcibly resettled to the west of theOder-Neisse line which became the eastern boundary of Germany.[4] The Strachwitz family settled temporarily with relatives inBraunschweig, in the British zone ofAllied-occupied Germany, where he first heardswing music played onArmed Forces Radio.[5]
In 1947, the family emigrated to the United States, moving first toReno, Nevada, and then toSanta Barbara, California. Strachwitz attendedCate School in nearbyCarpinteria. He became interested injazz after seeing the movieNew Orleans, starringBillie Holiday andLouis Armstrong, and began collecting jazz records. He stated in a 2010 interview:[6]
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 attendedPomona College inClaremont,[7] and started visiting jazz clubs inLos Angeles as well asrhythm and blues shows featuringLightnin' Hopkins,Howlin' Wolf and others. He began taping the radio broadcasts and live shows of his friend, jazz musicianFrank Demond, before enrolling in 1952 atUC Berkeley, where he booked jazz and R&B performers as entertainment at football games.[5][8]
Strachwitz became a United States citizen and wasdrafted into theU.S. Army in 1954, just after theKorean War, being stationed inSalzburg, Austria, from where he continued to see touring jazz shows. After finishing his service he returned to Berkeley, completing his studies inengineering,mathematics andphysics, and then taking a degree inpolitical science and an advanced degree insecondary education in 1960. At the same time, he continued to develop his technical skills, learning from established producerBob Geddins and through recordingSan Francisco street musicianJesse Fuller, jazzsaxophonistSonny Simmons and others. He also worked as a high school teacher inLos Gatos for three years from 1959.[5][8]
In summer 1959, he made a trip toHouston, Texas, intending to visit his hero, Lightnin' Hopkins. Although unable to record Hopkins at the time due to lack of money and equipment,[9] he resolved to return to the area the following year. With the proceeds from trading in78 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 recordedMance Lipscomb for the first time. Lipscomb's album,Texas Sharecropper and Songster, 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 afield holler.[8] Strachwitz also recorded"Black Ace" Turner,"Li'l Son" Jackson andWhistlin' Alex Moore on the same trip, and later in the year recordedBig Joe Williams andMercy Dee Walton in California.[5]
Strachwitz also began reissuing archive material, both of R&B singers such asBig Joe Turner andLowell Fulson who had recorded for the defunct Swingtime label, and oldcountry and western recordings on his Old Timey label, started in 1962. He stopped teaching that year and moved back toBerkeley, to devote himself to developing the record business. He also continued travelling to make field recordings of blues musicians, notablyMississippi Fred McDowell (whom he first recorded in 1964),Juke Boy Bonner,K. C. Douglas, andClifton Chenier. From 1965, he also hosted a Sunday afternoon music program onPacifica Radio'sKPFA-FM inBerkeley, California, which ran until 1995.[5]
In 1965, his friendED Denson introduced him to a local band,Country Joe and the Fish, who were active inanti-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 theWoodstock Festivalmovie andsoundtrack album—helped subsidize the Arhoolie label, and enabled Strachwitz to buy a building on San Pablo Avenue inEl Cerrito, California, as the label's headquarters.[6][8] Strachwitz also won royalties for Fred McDowell from theRolling Stones' performance of his song "You Gotta Move" on theirSticky Fingers album.[5]
During the 1970s, Strachwitz continued to record blues musicians, includingBig Joe Duskin,Charlie Musselwhite,Big Mama Thornton,Elizabeth Cotten, andRobben Ford, as well asCajun andzydeco performers such asClifton Chenier, Lawrence Ardoin andJohn Delafose. He also continued to secure the rights to release archive blues material such as that bySnooks Eaglin andRobert 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.[5]
Strachwitz also increasingly focused attention onMexican 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.[6] The first such album on Arhoolie wasConjuntos Norteños, by Los Pinguinos del Norte, released in 1970, but one of his biggest successes came withFlaco Jiménez, whose albumAy Te Dejo en San Antonio won aGrammy Award in 1986.[8] WithcinematographerLes Blank, he also made two documentaries about the music in the mid 1970s,Chulas Fronteras andDel Mero Corazon. He discovered and released the first two albums of seminalklezmer revival bandThe Klezmorim. Another of Strachwitz's discoveries, and one of his biggest commercial successes, was Cajun musicianMichael Doucet and his groupBeauSoleil.[5] In 2013, Strachwitz sawHowellDevine performing live and signed them to Arhoolie for the two albums that followed.[10]
In late 2023, the Arhoolie Foundation published the bookDown Home Music: The Stories and Photographs of Chris Strachwitz, byJoel Selvin with Chris Strachwitz. According to Selvin, he was a longtime friend and disciple of Strachwitz, and that when Strachwitz suggested publishing a book from his huge collection of digitized photographs, Selvin enthusiastically jumped in to help. They worked on the book in the last 18 months of Strachwitz's life, and Selvin finished it shortly after Strachwitz's death.[11][12]
Strachwitz died on May 5, 2023, at age 91.[13][14]
In 1993, Strachwitz received a lifetime achievement award from the Blues Symposium for his role in preserving the blues,[15] and in 1999 was inducted as a non-performing member of theBlues Hall of Fame.[16]
In 1995 he formed the Arhoolie Foundation "to document, preserve, present and disseminate authentic traditional and regional vernacular music."[5] The Foundation owns the Chris Strachwitz Frontera Collection, comprising about 44,000 commercially issuedphonograph records of Mexican-American and Mexican vernacular material, issued between around 1906 and the 1990s, which are now[when?] in the process of being digitized.[17] In 2009, the collection was opened to the public at theChicano Studies Research Center of theUniversity of California, Los Angeles.[6]
Strachwitz was a recipient of a 2000National Heritage Fellowship from theNational Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.[18]
In February 2016, he was awarded theGrammy Trustees Award by The Recording Academy at the 2016 Grammys in recognition of his contributions in areas of recording other than performance.[19]
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