The folklorist who preserved the music of America’s roots

Chris Strachwitz 1931–2023

Many of the tunes of U.S. cotton fields, bayous, honkytonks, and church basements would have been lost if not for Chris Strachwitz. The music producer’s thousands of recordings included examples of blues, zydeco, polka, and Hawaiian steel guitar. He amassed the world’s largest collection of Mexican-American norteño music, and the 400 albums released under his label, Arhoolie Records, now belong to the Smithsonian Institution. “My stuff isn’t produced,” he said in 2014. “I just catch it as it is.”

Christian Alexander Maria Strachwitz was born into privilege as a German count, said the San Francisco Chronicle, but the Soviets took over the family estate during World War II, and the Strachwitzes fled to the U.S. The teenage Chris “landed in Reno, where his only friend was the radio,” and he learned English along with American music. After a stint in the Army, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley and taught high school German for a few years before turning to music. In EastTexas in 1960, he crossed paths with bluesman Mance Lipscomb and put out his first record. Lipscomb shot to fame, and Strachwitz became a major player in the folk revival of the early 1960s.

A Strachwitz-assembled jug band handed Arhoolie “unexpected commercial success,” said The NewYork Times. Country Joe and the Fish played the “I-FeelLike-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock in 1969, and it became an anthem of the anti–Vietnam War movement. During Strachwitz’s final days, a constant stream of musicians, grateful for their breaks, provided bedside serenades. But he remained modest about his contributions. “I am, in a way, a diplomat for the music,” he said. “I just wanted to record things I liked.”