Look at the photograph above on the right. It is 1959 in a Houston, Texas, back street and everybody seems content apart from the unidentified gent at the back. And no one is happier than the white man. And why shouldn't he be? Chris Strachwitz is with his heroes Long Gone Miles (third left) and, perhaps, his favourite musician, the great blues singer/guitarist, Lightning Hopkins.
This photograph is one of the many evocative and colourful images which illustrate the superb sleeve notes of The Journey of Chris Strachwitz: Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection 1960- 2000 (Arhoolie). This five-CD boxed set is not a greatest hits collection of a small but influential American roots music label; rather it is the story of one man's mission to spread the word about the riches of ethnic music.
Chris Strachwitz would not seem to be a likely candidate for such a role. He and his family had left Germany as the advancing Russian army moved towards his small farm town. They moved to Sweden and from there to the United States, where they arrived in 1947 (his maternal grandmother had been American). Like many in Europe, Strachwitz had already been exposed to the thrills of black music - albeit of the mild variety - by the likes of Al Jolson, but when he began to hear the real thing on the radio in his new home in Reno, Nevada, his head was turned forever.
"As a teenager I was very insecure. I couldn't speak English well and I was very skinny - some of the kids in high school called me `Pencil'. So I was just longing for something that spoke to me, and I was listening to the radio and heard this amazing stuff." Initially, those sounds were country-tinged, either nasal rural twang or the perky western swing sophistication of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Later he would get bitten by the New Orleans bug, Kid Ory and Louis Armstrong before succumbing to the blues and legends such as Lightning, Mance Lipscomb, Big Joe Williams and Fred McDowell. Later still, he would return to Louisiana - but not for jazz. This time he would put his boundless enthusiasm behind the wild music of the bayou, Zydeco, the dance music of the Creoles and Cajun, the distinctive folk music of the descendants of French Canadians. Names such as "King" Clifton Chenier, recorded under the Arhoolie banner though not always getting the financial reward they desired.
This lack of business acumen was clearly both a strength and a weakness of Strachwitz's label. After he formed the label in 1960 to record and re-release some of the minor treasures he was meeting and discovering on his cut-price travels through the South, the former German teacher struggled to keep it all together. Ethnic music had a limited constituency in those days, but Strachwitz says proudly that he always paid his bills. According to the sleeve notes he insisted that all his artists were free to sign with other labels whenever they pleased. Deals were done, but there was no small print and no big promises. The music was the thing. He preferred live recording to studio settings, using the fevered atmosphere to offset any of the technical shortcomings.
As these five CDs show, his taste was eclectic but finely tuned, ranging from Texas country blues to New Orleans ragtime, from hillbilly country to German folk dance, from Cajun to Tex-Mex, from Gospel to Zydeco and many parts in between. The 107 tracks here do not represent the label's greatest performances, but are an intriguing and colourful reflection of the man who selected them.
Many of these artists would never have been heard outside their immediate communities were it not for Chris Strachwitz. He understood the values, importance and sheer joy of ethnic music and continues to promote it, both through his record label and the charitable foundation of the same name.
The American musician, Ry Cooder, no slouch himself when it comes to fanning the flames of ethnic music, pays extravagant tribute: "The thing you have to understand about Chris is that he's a very brilliant guy. He's got a big brain up there and that kind of European-educated, aristocratic cultivated mind. He's not just some Santa Monica boy like me, he's from another realm of education, of culture, of thinking.
"He came over here like an explorer, almost like a John James Audubon, into the New World, and saw something that he liked and wanted to do, and he had the brainpower and the tools to pull it off. Plus he has an extraordinary energy and focus and an ear that is flawless. Down in Texas they call him `El Fanatico'."
Cooder's sentiments are echoed by the renowned author Peter Guralnick, albeit a little more succinctly: "Here is the library of America writ large. Its many moments of aching beauty and sheer transcendence are overshadowed only by the constant presence of plainspoken truth."
This box set is the work of a lifetime. Chris Strachwitz has grown from a native German with a gra for American rhythms to one of the great collectors and promoters of Americana music. It has been one seriously interesting journey.