Arhoolie Recordings a Grass-Roots Treasure

One of the most rewarding things you can do in the continuing search for inspiring new music is pause and listen to inspiring old music--not familiar hits, but passionate sounds from outside the commercial mainstream. It’s an invaluable way to broaden your horizons.

Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music” has underscored this principle twice--first in the early ‘50s when the vinyl set had a huge impact on a generation of emerging folk singers and songwriters, including Bob Dylan, and again in 1997 when it was hailed by critics after being re-released in CD.

Now, “Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection 1960-2000: The Journey of Chris Strachwitz” serves as an essential companion piece. The collection, just released as a five-CD boxed set, brings together more than 100 roots-conscious selections personally recorded by Arhoolie founder Strachwitz.

Like the late Smith, Strachwitz has long had a love for regional and ethnic music that conveyed a vitality and grass-roots character often missing from the mainstream-aimed recordings favored by most record companies. It’s an interest that led them to folk, blues, hillbilly, gospel and beyond.

Smith was a record collector who put 85 of his favorite old recordings into a bulky album that was released by Folkways Records. Dave Von Ronk, a key part of the Greenwich Village folk movement in the ‘60s, declared the anthology to be the folk singer’s bible.

The German-born Strachwitz, whose family moved to the United States in 1947, was also an avid record collector, but he took his fascination with music one step further. He set out to make his own recordings.

Strachwitz was a high school teacher in Los Gatos in the late ‘50s when he became increasingly intrigued by regional music--first the blues that he heard around the Bay Area and then the Cajun and zydeco sounds that he found in Louisiana, and the Spanish-language border music that he heard in Texas.

He recorded dozens of artists and eventually released them on his Arhoolie Records. The label’s mountain of albums and singles has touched a wide range of ‘70s and ‘80s singers and songwriters, including Bonnie Raitt.

“That Chris has remained as impassioned, curious, fair and tenacious as ever over these last 40 years in the frustrating, marginalized world of roots music is a testament to his importance,” she writes in the booklet that is included in the boxed set. “This music is our genetic code.”

“Many record labels start out as labors of love, but very few remain that for four decades,” writes Elijah Wald in his history of Arhoolie that is also contained in the booklet.

The inspiring thing about the album is that most of these artists operated so far beneath the commercial radar that they had only the faintest dreams of ever becoming stars. Still, they poured themselves into the recordings with a passion that was frequently magical. The performances capture the thrill of simply being able to share your musical gift.

Once you get into the spirit of the set, you are likely to find dozens of enchanting moments among the six hours of music--recordings by such artists as Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin’ Hopkins, BeauSoleil, Big Mama Thornton, Clifton Chenier, Fred McDowell, Rose Maddox, Lydia Mendoza, Piano Red and Flaco Jimenez.

The album closes with a pair of extraordinary records that Strachwitz made in April with some “sacred steel” musicians in Florida--gospel music that is played on lap steel and pedal steel guitars.

Here are a few highlights that suggest the depth and range of the Strachwitz’s vision and Arhoolie’s legacy:

* K.C. Douglas’ “Mercury Blues.” Douglas was a Mississippi musician who moved to California in 1945 and recorded “Mercury Boogie” for Bob Geddins’ Down Town Records in 1948. Strachwitz recorded this version of “Mercury” in 1959. According to the liner notes, the recording was pretty much a practice session for Strachwitz, taped for fun before he had even started the label. But the song would play an important role in Arhoolie’s history. Because Strachwitz took out copyrights on songs he recorded, the company profited handsomely when Steve Miller recorded a rock rendition of “Mercury Blues” in the ‘80s and then when Alan Jackson had a big country hit with it in the ‘90s. Indeed, it was publishing money that helped keep the struggling label afloat over the years. After Miller’s version, Geddins claimed he had written the song. By then, Douglas had died, and it was Strachwitz’s word against Geddins’, so the two men split the publishing.

* Juke Boy Bonner’s “Goin’ Back to the Country.” Bonner was a Houston bluesman whose songs reflected the stark living conditions in the big city. “It’s really not my desire,” he says in the song, but he decides it’s best for him because at least there he knows he won’t have to worry about being hit by “no sniper’s fire.”

* Clifton Chenier’s “Ay, Ai, Ai.” Strachwitz wasn’t fond of some of the Specialty recordings that Chenier cut in the ‘50s because they were too close to the commercial R&B; of the time. But Strachwitz saw him at a Houston show playing accordion accompanied only by a drummer. Strachwitz liked this rawer sound, and he recorded him with just accordion, drums and piano. Chenier’s Arhoolie recordings were pivotal in spreading the appeal of zydeco music.

* Trio San Antonio’s “Yo Me Enamore.” This group was a special favorite of Strachwitz. In the booklet, he says, “I had heard Fred Zimmerle’s 78s, and I just loved both how he sang and how he played the accordion that lilting style, it was just unbelievable. . . . I had heard [“Yo Me Enamore”] on a record . . . on Perla Records . . . the most haunting 45 I’ve ever heard in my life--they just cried their hearts out. So I told them, ‘You gotta do that one for me.’ We recorded it the same way, with just bajo sexto and guitar; that was the older style, before the accordion took over in the ‘40s.”

* The Campbell Brothers’ “What’s His Name?--Jesus.” An example of “sacred steel” music, this extraordinary track starts off with the earnest vocals of Darick Campbell and Katie Jackson, but it’s the steel guitar touches that take it to another level. The album closes with another example of the style, Aubrey Ghent’s “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.”

This is music every bit as enchanting as Strachwitz’s earliest recordings, and it is a tribute to him that he continues to have the energy and ear to find great talent, as well as the commitment to share it with us.