Arhoolie Records Founder and producer Chris Strachwitz Dies at 91

American record label executive and producer, Chris Strachwitz, passed away on May 5, 2023, in California. He was the founder and president of Arhoolie Records, which he established in 1960 and which became one of the leading labels recording and distributing blues, Cajun, norteño, and other forms of roots music from the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Born in Gross Reichenau, Lower Silesia, he and his family were among the German-speaking people forcibly resettled to the west of the Oder-Neisse line under the Potsdam Agreement after World War II. The family emigrated to the United States in 1947, and Strachwitz became interested in jazz and began collecting records. He attended college in California and started visiting jazz clubs in Los Angeles, and later became a US citizen and served in the army before returning to California to complete his studies and develop his technical skills in recording music.

In 1959, Chris Strachwitz went to Houston to meet his musical hero, Lightnin’ Hopkins, but didn’t have the equipment to record him. The next year, he returned with new recording equipment he bought with the proceeds from trading 78 rpm records. With the help of Mack McCormick, Strachwitz recorded Mance Lipscomb for the first time, and released Lipscomb’s album, Texas Sharecropper and Songster, as Arhoolie’s debut. Strachwitz also recorded other musicians on this trip, including “Black Ace” Turner, “Li’l Son” Jackson, and “Whistling” Alex Moore. Later that year, he recorded Big Joe Williams and Mercy Dee Walton in California.

In addition to recording new musicians, Strachwitz reissued archive material from R&B singers like Big Joe Turner and Lowell Fulson, and old country and western recordings under his Old Timey label. He stopped teaching in 1962 and focused on his record business. Strachwitz continued to make field recordings of blues musicians like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Juke Boy Bonner, K.C. Douglas, and Clifton Chenier. He also hosted a Sunday afternoon music program on KPFA-FM in Berkeley from 1965 to 1995.

In 1966, Strachwitz recorded Country Joe and the Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die” and gained a share of the song’s publishing rights, which helped to fund Arhoolie’s operations. He also acquired royalties for Fred McDowell from the Rolling Stones’ version of “You Gotta Move.”

In the 1970s, he recorded blues, Cajun, and zydeco performers, as well as acquired rights to release archive blues material. In the 1980s and 1990s, Arhoolie became a distributor for smaller independent blues labels and an importer of jazz and blues releases from Europe. Strachwitz developed an interest in Mexican and norteño music, releasing Los Pinguinos del Norte’s Conjuntos Norteños in 1970. He amassed the largest personal collection of Mexican-American and Mexican music.

Chris Strachwitz achieved notable success with Flaco Jiménez, whose album Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio received a Grammy Award in 1986. Strachwitz, along with cinematographer Les Blank, produced two documentaries about music in the mid-1970s: Chulas Fronteras and Del Mero Corazón. He also discovered and released the first two albums of the seminal klezmer revival band, The Klezmorim.

Another significant discovery of Strachwitz was Cajun musician Michael Doucet and his group BeauSoleil, who became one of his most commercially successful acts. In 2013, Strachwitz encountered the musical talent of HowellDevine during a live performance and subsequently signed them to Arhoolie, resulting in two subsequent albums under the label’s name.

Chris Strachwitz received numerous recognitions and awards for his contributions to music preservation and recording. In 1993, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Blues Symposium and in 1999 was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. He founded the Arhoolie Foundation in 1995 to document, preserve, present and disseminate traditional and regional vernacular music. The foundation owns the Chris Strachwitz Frontera Collection, which comprises about 44,000 commercially issued phonograph records of Mexican-American and Mexican vernacular material, and in 2009, it was opened to the public at the Chicano Studies Research Center of the University of California.

In 2000, Strachwitz received the National Heritage Fellowship, the United States’ highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Additionally, in February 2016, he was awarded the Grammy Trustees Award by The Recording Academy at the 2016 Grammys for his contributions to music recording.

The Arhoolie foundation released the following statement:

“We celebrate the life of our founder, friend, and great record man Chris Strachwitz. He died peacefully at home in Marin County, CA, surrounded in his last days by dear friends and family. Over his 91 years, Chris captured the music that represents the best “down home music” the world has to offer.

“He was at the forefront of nearly all the roots revivals over the last 60 years including blues, zydeco, Cajun, Norteño and Tejano music. His drive to document traditional music helped introduce the nation to our diverse musical heritage. He had the foresight to save music that might have otherwise been lost to obscurity and played a role in strengthening cultural traditions through his records, films, and most recently the Arhoolie Foundation. He cared for those around him, fought for royalties and recognition for Arhoolie artists, and provided counsel to countless musicians, writers, filmmakers, and academics.

Plans for a public celebration of his life will be announced in the coming weeks. Today we’re thinking of all that Chris brought to our lives and the lives of the musicians and fans with whom he shared his passion.“