Now 89, one-time refugee Chris Strachwitz presides over one of the greatest US labels, having removed the stigma from working-class music like blues and zydeco to give a voice to the ignored
This year, 3 November saw two momentous events take place in the US: American voters chose Joe Biden for president and Arhoolie Records turned 60. I put this conjunction to Arhoolie’s founder, Chris Strachwitz, who laughs. “Well, that may have been the day of the invoice from the pressing plant when they shipped the first albums,” he says, underplaying quite how seminal the release of Mance Lipscomb’s 1960 LP Texas Sharecropper and Songster would prove to be. He pressed only 500 copies of Lipscomb’s album to begin with, but one of America’s greatest record labels has grown from those humble beginnings.
The recording of Lipscomb, who had rarely sung beyond the cotton plantation he lived on, came about after Strachwitz, a San Francisco Bay Area high-school teacher (“I was lousy”), had spent his 1960 summer vacation in Texas failing to record Lightnin’ Hopkins. The blues musician insisted on being paid upfront for every song recorded, rejecting Strachwitz’s offer of a small advance plus future royalties. Strachwitz was directed towards Lipscomb instead, and while initially reluctant – Lipscomb was a “songster”, his music far gentler than Hopkins’ razor-sharp blues – he agreed to make the recording.