Chris Strachwitz immigrated with his family from
Silesia in 1947, and became enamored with American regional music after seeing the film
New Orleans. He eventually settled in the San Francisco bay area, and in 1960 he headed to Texas to record bluesman
Lightnin' Hopkins, but it turned out that Hopkins was in Berkeley for a performance engagement. He met up with historian
Mack McCormick, and together they traveled to
Navasota, Texas where Strachwitz recorded
Mance Lipscomb for what would become the first Arhoolie LP,
Texas Sharecropper and Songster. 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
Whistlin' 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 (with
Pete Johnson) and
Lowell Fulson who had recorded for the defunct
Swing Time label in the 1940s, and old
country and western recordings on his Old Timey label, started in 1962. Strachwitz continued traveling to make field recordings of blues musicians, notably
Mississippi Fred McDowell (whom he first recorded in 1964),
Juke Boy Bonner, and
K. C. Douglas. From 1965, he also hosted a Sunday afternoon music program on
Pacifica Radio's
KPFA-FM in
Berkeley, California, which ran until 1995. With
cinematographer Les Blank, he also made two documentaries about the music in the mid 1970s,
Chulas Fronteras and
Del Mero Corazon. He discovered and released the first two albums of seminal
klezmer revival band
The Klezmorim. Another of Strachwitz's discoveries, and one of his biggest commercial successes, was Cajun musician
Michael Doucet and his group
BeauSoleil.
Snooks Eaglin,
Dave Alexander,
Nathan Beauregard,
Clifton Chenier,
Elizabeth Cotten,
Sue Draheim,
Jesse Fuller,
Earl Hooker,
John Jackson,
Mance Lipscomb,
Guitar Slim,
Robert Shaw,
Mississippi Fred McDowell,
Whistlin' Alex Moore,
Charlie Musselwhite,
Doctor Ross,
Bukka White,
Big Joe Williams,
Silas Hogan,
Mercy Dee Walton,
The Campbell Brothers,
BeauSoleil,
Jerry Hahn, the
Pine Leaf Boys,
Los Cenzontles,
The Klezmorim,
Rose Maddox,
Rebirth Brass Band, and
HowellDevine. In 2014, filmmakers
Maureen Gosling and Chris Simon released a documentary film about Arhoolie Records entitled ''This Ain't No Mouse Music'', which is distributed by Argot Pictures. In May 2016, the
Smithsonian Institution announced it had acquired Arhoolie Records from founder Chris Strachwitz and his business partner Tom Diamant for the
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. In late 2023, the Arhoolie Foundation published the book
Down Home Music: The Stories and Photographs of Chris Strachwitz, by
Joel Selvin with Chris Strachwitz. According to Selvin, he was a longtime friend and disciple of Strachwitz, and when Strachwitz suggested publishing a book from his huge collection of digitized photographs, Selvin enthusiastically offered 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. ==See also==