SLIM ANDREWS ONE MAN BAND MOVIE

He also made country and jazz recordings as well as releasing records of older ethnic and regional music. Strachwitz’s numerous Mexican American recordings include Flaco Jiménez, who won a Grammy for the Arhoolie album Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio y Más! Strachwitz also traveled around the country recording a number of gospel steel guitarists in their homes and churches. He has recorded several important blues singers, and his Cajun, Creole, and zydeco releases-including the “King of Zydeco” Clifton Chenier-aided in popularizing these genres. Strachwitz’s recordings continue to introduce generations of fans to a variety of vernacular musicians who might otherwise have remained unknown. Pope created the guitar-shaped logo that appears on every Arhoolie recording. Strachwitz and his friend, graphic designer Wayne Pope, single-handedly pasted the front covers on 250 black cardboard record jackets. McCormick suggested the name Arhoolie to Strachwitz it allegedly meant “field holler,” though “hoolie” was likely the correct term. In November of 1960, Strachwitz released the first LP on his Arhoolie label featuring Mance Lipscomb. Strachwitz’s friend and host Mack McCormick, an amateur folklorist, musicologist, and taxi driver, then took him north to the rural town of Navasota, where the pair met and recorded Mance Lipscomb, a Texas sharecropper skilled at performing a variety of folk songs, ballads, dance tunes, and blues. Strachwitz returned the following year hoping to capture Hopkins live-only to discover that the musician was on his way to California. Struck by his improvised lyrics and spontaneous exchange with the audience, Strachwitz knew he wanted to record him in that setting. In the summer of 1959, he traveled by bus to Houston, Texas, where he met and saw blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins perform in a small beer joint. Around this time, Strachwitz also began collecting 78-rpm records, a passion that he has continued to pursue throughout his life.Īfter college and a two-year stint in the United States Army, Strachwitz worked as a German teacher at Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools in California. Strachwitz started listening to radio broadcasts of hillbilly-country, rhythm-and-blues, gospel, and Mexican music.

SLIM ANDREWS ONE MAN BAND MOVIE

As a shy, lanky teenager in private school, he saw the movie New Orleans, which starred Louis Armstrong and the Kid Ory band, and he instantly fell in love with New Orleans jazz. During this time, Strachwitz quickly developed a passion for American vernacular music. Strachwitz’s maternal grandmother was an American, and one of his great-aunts, who lived in Reno, Nevada, hosted the family for many years before they moved to Carmel, California. Towards the end of the war, Strachwitz and his family fled the advancing Russian army, staying with an uncle near Brunswick in the British Zone and eventually settling in the United States in 1947.

1931) grew up in the German province of Lower Silesia, which became part of Poland following World War II. An Immigrant’s Journey into American Vernacular MusicĬhris Strachwitz (b.

Slim andrews one man band