Chris Strachwitz Collection, 1958-2023, bulk 1960-2010

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Summary

Abstract:
Correspondence, business and research files, audio and video recordings, photographs, and ephemera documenting the life of Chris Strachwitz and his activities as founder of Arhoolie Records, record collector, and documentarian of folk and regional music throughout the United States and Mexico.
Extent:
124 Linear Feet Approximately 124 linear feet, plus audiovisual materials inventoried separately.
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

[Item title], Chris Strachwitz Collection (AF-001). The Arhoolie Foundation, El Cerrito, California.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection comprises the audiovisual recordings, papers, and photographs of Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records. The collection documents Strachwitz's activities as a music producer, record label owner, music publisher, festival organizer, record collector, and documentarian of tradition-based and vernacular music. Contents include Strachwitz's correspondence, photographs, interviews, travel and field notes, research files, posters, writings, and sound and video recordings documenting concerts, performances, and events.

Biographical / historical:

Chris Strachwitz (1931-2023) was a music producer, record collector, documentarian of folk and regional music, and founder of the independent record label Arhoolie Records. From 1960-2016, Strachwitz's Arhoolie label produced albums showcasing a wide variety of American, Mexican, and international folk, regional, and vernacular music traditions, including blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Tejano/Norteño, Klezmer, old-time, and bluegrass.

Born into a prominent agricultural family in Lower Silesia, Germany (now Poland), Strachwitz emigrated to the United States with his family as a teenager after World War II. Settling with his maternal great-aunts in Reno, Nevada, he soon developed a fascination with New Orleans jazz, hillbilly-country, rhythm-and-blues, gospel, and Mexican music. He pursued his growing musical interests by listening to radio broadcasts and collecting 78-rpm records, and eventually by corresponding with other record enthusiasts.

In the 1950s, Strachwitz served a two-year stint in the Army and attended college at Pomona College and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1959, while working as a schoolteacher in Los Gatos, California, Strachwitz traveled to Navasota, Texas, to record his first record for Arhoolie Records, Mance Lipscomb's Texas Sharecropper Blues. The album's emphasis on raw performance captured "in the field" became the hallmark of Strachwitz's approach to recording.

In the 1960s, Strachwitz founded a publishing company, Tradition Music. In the 1970s, Arhoolie expanded to include the Old Timey and Blues Classics imprints, both devoted to the reissue of recordings from the 78-rpm era, and in 1972 Strachwitz purchased the Folk-Lyric label from Professor Harry Oster, on which he reissued historic Texas-Mexican border music and other types of older regional and ethnic music. In 1976, Strachwitz founded Down Home Music Store in El Cerrito, California, as a retail outlet for Arhoolie and other folk/roots recordings.

From 1960-2016, Strachwitz produced over 400 albums for Arhoolie and collaborated with documentary filmmaker Les Blank on two films about regional music and culture (Chulas Fronteras, 1976; J'ai Été Au Bal, 1989).

In 1995, Strachwitz founded the Arhoolie Foundation to promote and preserve tradition-based music. From 2001-2021, the Arhoolie Foundation digitized Strachwitz's expansive collection of Mexican-American recordings, resulting in the creation of the Frontera Collection.

In 2000, Strachwitz was named a National Heritage Fellow. In 2016, he won the Grammy's Trustees Award for lifetime achievement. The same year, the Sage Foundation purchased the Arhoolie label and gifted it to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in order to preserve Strachwitz's important contributions to the history of American traditional music in perpetuity.

Acquisition information:
Donated by Chris Strachwitz, 2023.
Processing information:

The collection has been minimally processed to facilitate access. Materials were rehoused in archival boxes. Materials were refoldered only if original folders posed preservation risks. Original folder titles and original order of materials has been retained wherever possible. Materials that creator left unfoldered have been placed flat in archival boxes and cataloged at the box level. Audiovisual items have been inventoried and placed on shelves.

Processed by Maggie Harrison and Clark Noone, 2024.

Arrangement:

Series 1: Audiovisual Recordings Series 2: Papers Series 3: Photographs

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Access to collection is by appointment only. Please contact the repository at info@arhoolie.org for more information.

Terms of access:

All requests for permission to reproduce or to publish must be submitted in writing to the Arhoolie Foundation.

Preferred citation:

[Item title], Chris Strachwitz Collection (AF-001). The Arhoolie Foundation, El Cerrito, California.

Location of this collection:
10341 San Pablo Ave.
El Cerrito, CA 94530, US
Contact:
(510) 525-7471
info@arhoolie.org
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