Music
Unsung
Chris Strachwitz has spent his life recording some of Texas' greatest musicians. Haven't heard of him? A new CD box set will make you take note.
What record company has the biggest and best collection of indigenous Texas music? Hint: It's not based in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin—or, for that matter, anywhere in the state. The answer is Arhoolie Records, founded in 1960 by a German immigrant named Chris Strachwitz and located in the working-class suburb of El Cerrito, California, just north of Berkeley. The 69-year-old Strachwitz has released nearly three hundred CDs of American blues, country, zydeco, cajun, Tex-Mex, tejano, polka, jazz, klezmer, gospel, and more, but his tastes have continually drawn him to Texas, especially to the sounds of the Mexican border.
"Texas has always had so many areas that are isolated. Things don't change as much there," he says. "People are still proud of what they have, and they aren't confused by all this outside crap that's laid on kids that's supposed to be wonderful. That's what kills regional cultures, but it's strange how slow it dies there." Strachwitz's roll call includes the pre-blues African American music of Mance Lipscomb, the rural blues of Lightnin' Hopkins, the piano blues of Alex Moore, the western swing of Bob Wills, the countrified blues of Bill Neely, the formative Tex-Mex accordion of Narcisco Martinez, the conjunto of Flaco Jimenez, and the eccentricities of Bongo Joe. They were recorded in living rooms, in studios, in concert halls, wherever it felt most comfortable. Many of those innovators appear on a landmark five-CD box set to be released this month: Arhoolie Records Fortieth Anniversary Collection: 1960-2000, The Journey of Chris Strachwitz. About one third of its 106 tracks are by Texans.
The collection contains only songs that Strachwitz recorded himself or that came from sessions he attended. A self-described "not very good merchant" working with so little money he can hardly call it a budget, Strachwitz has applied a simple aesthetic to his label: He releases what he likes. Though often described as a folklorist, he disparages such earnest types as "folkie dolkies." It's more accurate to say that he favors the musicians of working-class or "outsider" cultures, whether they've flirted with the commercial music business (Hopkins) or were purely traditional (Lipscomb). His best-selling albums—by zydeco king Clifton Chenier, conjunto accordionist Flaco Jimenez, R&B songstress Big Mama Thornton, and the cajun band BeauSoleil—have sold around 20,000 copies each in the past decade; many of his other releases have sold fewer than 2,000. But Strachwitz's influence dwarfs those numbers. He helped create the blues boom of the sixties, and without him, Jimenez and the late Chenier might have remained strictly regional performers. "Chris and Arhoolie are the benchmark, the standard that all independent roots-music labels should aspire to," says Dick Waterman, who once booked and managed such towering country bluesmen as Son House and Fred McDowell.
"It's hard for me to say why I was never all that enthralled by popular music," Strachwitz says. "I wanted to stand up for the beauty of what I believe in. I'm a strong advocate for not only the rights of these artists but also their cultural rights. I do the best I can to be an advocate for the authentic stuff." What he lacks in money for his musicians he makes up for with enthusiasm, bending the usual rules of recordmaking to present the music as the artist wants it heard. He doesn't hold musicians to contracts; he cuts one album at a time and encourages them to take better deals from bigger labels. But he is fair with what money he does make: Working in a corner of the music business even more notorious than most for cheating musicians, Strachwitz has a pristine reputation. Waterman notes that after Son House died, his widow complained that for all the albums her husband appeared on she'd never seen a penny, "except for one crazy guy out in California." That was Strachwitz, who conscientiously paid royalties every year, regardless of how small.
Strachwitz was sixteen in 1947, when his parents moved to Reno from Lower Silesia, which was part of Germany during World War II. The skinny teenager attended a boarding school near Santa Barbara, where he got the nickname Pencil. He became a classic outsider, identifying with the exotic music he heard on the radio: the big beat of rhythm and blues, the achingly pure harmonies of hillbilly ballads and Mexican American rancheras, the wild abandonment of New Orleans jazz. He spent every dime he had on records. After serving two years in the Army and finishing college at the University of California at Berkeley, he taught German at a high school near San Jose. He lasted three years, already preoccupied with exploring the secret history of American vernacular music, then available mostly on battered 78-rpm singles he found at thrift stores or by going door-to-door in ethnic neighborhoods to buy private collections.
Of all the musicians he came across, his favorite was Hopkins. "His voice had this kind of lonesomeness to it," he says, "with some sweetness and yet a rough side." In 1959 he learned from blues collector and historian Sam Charters that Lightnin' was living in Houston and was managed by an Anglo named Mack McCormick. Strachwitz went to Houston and found McCormick, who introduced him to Hopkins. That night Strachwitz went to see him perform at a juke joint no bigger than a modest living room. There, among an audience of about twelve, Chris had his epiphany. "He was droning away on electric guitar with just ol' Spider [Kilpatrick] behind him playing drums. When we walked in, he was singing about how his shoulder was aching and how he could hardly get to the job that night because water had filled the chuckholes. He rhymed as he went," Strachwitz marvels, as if the story he has told hundreds of times happened just last night. "And then he sang, 'This man came all the way from California / Just to hear poor Lightnin' sing.' He'd jive back and forth in song with the women. Most African American shows are like that, but I have never since encountered it to that degree of informality."
Strachwitz returned to Texas the next summer determined to record Hopkins, but he arrived at the same time the bluesman was leaving for Berkeley to play a folk festival. Instead, McCormick suggested that they drive up to Navasota to try to find other musicians like Hopkins. Incredibly, they stumbled across a plantation owner Hopkins sang about in the song "Tom Moore Blues," and he sent them on a trail that led to Mance Lipscomb. Strachwitz, who "just wanted nasty blues," was disappointed because Lipscomb's music was soft and sweet, but McCormick insisted that he was a real find, a pre-blues folk-music repository like Leadbelly. Strachwitz recorded nearly forty songs that night at Lipscomb's house, giving him $50 in cash and travelers checks. Without even looking at the money, he gave it to his wife. She was stunned when she saw the amount: Lipscomb had never before been paid so well for his music.
Though he was disappointed about missing Hopkins, it was an exhilarating trip for Strachwitz. He recorded Dallas bluesman Lil' Son Jackson, Fort Worth's Black Ace (one of the rare blues musicians to play a Hawaiian lap-steel guitar), and Dallas' barrelhouse pianist Whistlin' Alex Moore. On a visit to Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, he recorded several more country and blues singers. "This was a time when this country was totally neglecting its subcultures, when it didn't realize what a wealth of stuff there was," he says. Every new record was a potential revelation, every region an education.
When Strachwitz returned to California, his first release was Lipscomb's Texas Sharecropper and Songster. He pressed 250 copies and glued the cover art by hand on plain black sleeves. Thanks to a rave write-up in Saturday Review, that first pressing sold out fast. Soon afterward he recorded Hopkins too (though not before a dispute over money nearly caused a fistfight between McCormick and Lightnin'). Along with Lipscomb, Hopkins became one of Arhoolie's most prolific artists. Hopkins also introduced his cousin Clifton Chenier to Strachwitz at a club on the Houston Ship Channel. Chenier was wailing on his accordion, backed only by a drummer and singing in a patois Strachwitz found incomprehensible. When Strachwitz took him into the studio, though, Chenier wanted to record rocking rhythm and blues, with which he'd had some chart success in the fifties. Strachwitz wanted the French stuff. They compromised, agreeing to do half of each. When the French "Ay, Ai, Ai" attracted attention, Chenier became more enthusiastic about reexploring his Creole roots, resulting in an epochal string of albums topped by 1975's Bogalusa Boogie.
During the sixties Strachwitz recorded all manner of blues. But as the growing market among white fans made the music profitable for the first time, Strachwitz walked away. "I don't think there was much left to record," he says. "Everybody and his brother was starting to record the stuff, but it wasn't as interesting to me as the people I'd done." After making Chulas Fronteras in 1976 with documentary filmmaker Les Blank, Strachwitz has immersed himself in Tex-Mex and tejano. That movie featured historical figures like singer Lydia Mendoza, accordionist Narciso Martinez, and relative newcomer Flaco Jimenez. The film represented the music's first significant exposure outside South Texas. Initially, however, Strachwitz had to be sold on Jimenez because he was an undistinguished harmony singer. Still, he loved Jimenez's jazzy accordion playing. "Flaco told me, 'Oh, you like that? I like to do that too,'" Strachwitz says. "I don't think they really appreciated that sort of thing at the dances he played then." Jimenez's 1985 version of a song by his father, Santiago, "Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio," was the title track of an album that won the artist and Arhoolie their first Grammy. 
What record company has the biggest and best collection of indigenous Texas music? Hint: It's not based in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin—or, for that matter, anywhere in the state. The answer is Arhoolie Records, founded in 1960 by a German immigrant named Chris Strachwitz and located in the working-class suburb of El Cerrito, California, just north of Berkeley. The 69-year-old Strachwitz has released nearly three hundred CDs of American blues, country, zydeco, cajun, Tex-Mex, tejano, polka, jazz, klezmer, gospel, and more, but his tastes have continually drawn him to Texas, especially to the sounds of the Mexican border.
"Texas has always had so many areas that are isolated. Things don't change as much there," he says. "People are still proud of what they have, and they aren't confused by all this outside crap that's laid on kids that's supposed to be wonderful. That's what kills regional cultures, but it's strange how slow it dies there." Strachwitz's roll call includes the pre-blues African American music of Mance Lipscomb, the rural blues of Lightnin' Hopkins, the piano blues of Alex Moore, the western swing of Bob Wills, the countrified blues of Bill Neely, the formative Tex-Mex accordion of Narcisco Martinez, the conjunto of Flaco Jimenez, and the eccentricities of Bongo Joe. They were recorded in living rooms, in studios, in concert halls, wherever it felt most comfortable. Many of those innovators appear on a landmark five-CD box set to be released this month: Arhoolie Records Fortieth Anniversary Collection: 1960-2000, The Journey of Chris Strachwitz. About one third of its 106 tracks are by Texans.
The collection contains only songs that Strachwitz recorded himself or that came from sessions he attended. A self-described "not very good merchant" working with so little money he can hardly call it a budget, Strachwitz has applied a simple aesthetic to his label: He releases what he likes. Though often described as a folklorist, he disparages such earnest types as "folkie dolkies." It's more accurate to say that he favors the musicians of working-class or "outsider" cultures, whether they've flirted with the commercial music business (Hopkins) or were purely traditional (Lipscomb). His best-selling albums—by zydeco king Clifton Chenier, conjunto accordionist Flaco Jimenez, R&B songstress Big Mama Thornton, and the cajun band BeauSoleil—have sold around 20,000 copies each in the past decade; many of his other releases have sold fewer than 2,000. But Strachwitz's influence dwarfs those numbers. He helped create the blues boom of the sixties, and without him, Jimenez and the late Chenier might have remained strictly regional performers. "Chris and Arhoolie are the benchmark, the standard that all independent roots-music labels should aspire to," says Dick Waterman, who once booked and managed such towering country bluesmen as Son House and Fred McDowell.
"It's hard for me to say why I was never all that enthralled by popular music," Strachwitz says. "I wanted to stand up for the beauty of what I believe in. I'm a strong advocate for not only the rights of these artists but also their cultural rights. I do the best I can to be an advocate for the authentic stuff." What he lacks in money for his musicians he makes up for with enthusiasm, bending the usual rules of recordmaking to present the music as the artist wants it heard. He doesn't hold musicians to contracts; he cuts one album at a time and encourages them to take better deals from bigger labels. But he is fair with what money he does make: Working in a corner of the music business even more notorious than most for cheating musicians, Strachwitz has a pristine reputation. Waterman notes that after Son House died, his widow complained that for all the albums her husband appeared on she'd never seen a penny, "except for one crazy guy out in California." That was Strachwitz, who conscientiously paid royalties every year, regardless of how small.
Strachwitz was sixteen in 1947, when his parents moved to Reno from Lower Silesia, which was part of Germany during World War II. The skinny teenager attended a boarding school near Santa Barbara, where he got the nickname Pencil. He became a classic outsider, identifying with the exotic music he heard on the radio: the big beat of rhythm and blues, the achingly pure harmonies of hillbilly ballads and Mexican American rancheras, the wild abandonment of New Orleans jazz. He spent every dime he had on records. After serving two years in the Army and finishing college at the University of California at Berkeley, he taught German at a high school near San Jose. He lasted three years, already preoccupied with exploring the secret history of American vernacular music, then available mostly on battered 78-rpm singles he found at thrift stores or by going door-to-door in ethnic neighborhoods to buy private collections.
Of all the musicians he came across, his favorite was Hopkins. "His voice had this kind of lonesomeness to it," he says, "with some sweetness and yet a rough side." In 1959 he learned from blues collector and historian Sam Charters that Lightnin' was living in Houston and was managed by an Anglo named Mack McCormick. Strachwitz went to Houston and found McCormick, who introduced him to Hopkins. That night Strachwitz went to see him perform at a juke joint no bigger than a modest living room. There, among an audience of about twelve, Chris had his epiphany. "He was droning away on electric guitar with just ol' Spider [Kilpatrick] behind him playing drums. When we walked in, he was singing about how his shoulder was aching and how he could hardly get to the job that night because water had filled the chuckholes. He rhymed as he went," Strachwitz marvels, as if the story he has told hundreds of times happened just last night. "And then he sang, 'This man came all the way from California / Just to hear poor Lightnin' sing.' He'd jive back and forth in song with the women. Most African American shows are like that, but I have never since encountered it to that degree of informality."
Strachwitz returned to Texas the next summer determined to record Hopkins, but he arrived at the same time the bluesman was leaving for Berkeley to play a folk festival. Instead, McCormick suggested that they drive up to Navasota to try to find other musicians like Hopkins. Incredibly, they stumbled across a plantation owner Hopkins sang about in the song "Tom Moore Blues," and he sent them on a trail that led to Mance Lipscomb. Strachwitz, who "just wanted nasty blues," was disappointed because Lipscomb's music was soft and sweet, but McCormick insisted that he was a real find, a pre-blues folk-music repository like Leadbelly. Strachwitz recorded nearly forty songs that night at Lipscomb's house, giving him $50 in cash and travelers checks. Without even looking at the money, he gave it to his wife. She was stunned when she saw the amount: Lipscomb had never before been paid so well for his music.
Though he was disappointed about missing Hopkins, it was an exhilarating trip for Strachwitz. He recorded Dallas bluesman Lil' Son Jackson, Fort Worth's Black Ace (one of the rare blues musicians to play a Hawaiian lap-steel guitar), and Dallas' barrelhouse pianist Whistlin' Alex Moore. On a visit to Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, he recorded several more country and blues singers. "This was a time when this country was totally neglecting its subcultures, when it didn't realize what a wealth of stuff there was," he says. Every new record was a potential revelation, every region an education.
When Strachwitz returned to California, his first release was Lipscomb's Texas Sharecropper and Songster. He pressed 250 copies and glued the cover art by hand on plain black sleeves. Thanks to a rave write-up in Saturday Review, that first pressing sold out fast. Soon afterward he recorded Hopkins too (though not before a dispute over money nearly caused a fistfight between McCormick and Lightnin'). Along with Lipscomb, Hopkins became one of Arhoolie's most prolific artists. Hopkins also introduced his cousin Clifton Chenier to Strachwitz at a club on the Houston Ship Channel. Chenier was wailing on his accordion, backed only by a drummer and singing in a patois Strachwitz found incomprehensible. When Strachwitz took him into the studio, though, Chenier wanted to record rocking rhythm and blues, with which he'd had some chart success in the fifties. Strachwitz wanted the French stuff. They compromised, agreeing to do half of each. When the French "Ay, Ai, Ai" attracted attention, Chenier became more enthusiastic about reexploring his Creole roots, resulting in an epochal string of albums topped by 1975's Bogalusa Boogie.
During the sixties Strachwitz recorded all manner of blues. But as the growing market among white fans made the music profitable for the first time, Strachwitz walked away. "I don't think there was much left to record," he says. "Everybody and his brother was starting to record the stuff, but it wasn't as interesting to me as the people I'd done." After making Chulas Fronteras in 1976 with documentary filmmaker Les Blank, Strachwitz has immersed himself in Tex-Mex and tejano. That movie featured historical figures like singer Lydia Mendoza, accordionist Narciso Martinez, and relative newcomer Flaco Jimenez. The film represented the music's first significant exposure outside South Texas. Initially, however, Strachwitz had to be sold on Jimenez because he was an undistinguished harmony singer. Still, he loved Jimenez's jazzy accordion playing. "Flaco told me, 'Oh, you like that? I like to do that too,'" Strachwitz says. "I don't think they really appreciated that sort of thing at the dances he played then." Jimenez's 1985 version of a song by his father, Santiago, "Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio," was the title track of an album that won the artist and Arhoolie their first Grammy.
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