September 11, 2019
The Big Pond #45: The Passion of Chris Strachwitz

Chris Strachwitz
© John Fago

Chris Strachwitz is a man possessed. A “songcatcher,” capturing and recording the traditional, regional, down-home music of the US, his adopted home after his family left Germany following the end of World War II. His archive is jam-packed with 78s, LPs, 45s, reel-to-reels, cassettes, videos – a collection of all manner of recordings. For The Big Pond, The Kitchen Sisters present the story of Chris Strachwitz. 

Chris Strachwitz grew up in the 1930s as a member of an aristocratic family that lived in Lower Silesia, southeast of Berlin. He remembers how records that his parents brought back from a trip to the United States in 1938 were a window to the world for him – and how he was restricted from listening to music by Jewish composers at the time, out of the fear of retaliation from the Nazis.

Upon immigrating with his family to Reno, Nevada in 1947, music once again became his ear to the world – listening to local radio stations inspired him to take trips to see concerts and to seek out musicians like Lightnin’ Hopkins. Meeting this blues legend gave him the idea to record the artists he met, and he eventually published these recordings on his newly-founded label Arhoolie Records.

Listen to the whole story of Chris Strachwitz – as told by the man himself and through the records that shaped his life – in this music-filled episode of The Big Pond, produced by The Kitchen Sisters.

Music:
“You’re No Good” by Linda Ronstadt
“I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish
“I Want to Be Alone with Mary Brown” by Al Starita & the Piccadilly Players
“Tin Roof Blues” by Albert Burbank & Kid Ory
“Berliner Luft” from the operetta Frau Luna, composed by Paul Lincke, 1904
“Alma Linda” by Leo Garza y su Conjunto
“Mi Unico Camino” by Conjunto Bernal
“Milk Cow Blues” by Maddox Brothers and Rose 
“Have you Ever Loved A Woman” by Lightning Hopkins
“Come Back Baby” by Mance Lipscomb
“Tom Moore Blues” by Mance Lipscomb
“Write Me A Few of Your Lines” by Mississippi Fred McDowell
“You Got to Move” by Mississippi Fred McDowell
“Grand Texas” by The Hackberry Ramblers
“Zydeco Sont Pas Sale” by Clifton Chenier
“Ay, Ai Ai” by Clifton Chenier
“Charlie James” by Mance Lipscomb
“The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” by Los Pinguiños del Norté
“Cancion Mixteca” by Ramiro Cavazos & Rafael Ramîrez
“Jesus Will Fix It” by Sonny Treadway

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