Hours after the 2023 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival saluted Arhoolie Records founder and dedicated musicologist Chris Strachwitz on Friday, he died at an assisted care facility in Marin County, California, of complications from congestive heart failure. He was 91.
Starting in 1960, Strachwitz released more than 400 albums on Arhoolie, many of them by Louisiana roots music artists. He was instrumental in introducing Cajun and zydeco music to a larger audience and is credited with discovering zydeco king Clifton Chenier, as well as bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins.
He was also an early supporter and booster of community radio station WWOZ 90.7 FM.
Earlier this week, WWOZ rebroadcast several interviews with musicians that Strachwitz conducted for the station years ago.
An exhibit inside the Fair Grounds grandstand during the 2023 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival features the photographers of Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz.
On Friday, Jazz Fest’s Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage opened with a session celebrating the legacy of Strachwitz and Arhoolie. Participants in the panel discussion included Jazz Fest producer/director Quint Davis, who considered Strachwitz to be a key figure in the festival’s development, as well as Jazz & Heritage Foundation archivist Rachel Lyons, zydeco musician C.J. Chenier and jazz musician Lars Edegran.
An exhibit in the Fair Grounds grandstand during the festival displays dozens of photographs of musicians taken by Strachwitz over the decades.
Born in Germany, he moved to the United States and turned his love of traditional, regional music and the musicians who make it into a lifelong career and passion.
His interests ranged from Cajun and zydeco to Tex-Mex norteño to Mississippi delta country blues. In addition to Clifton Chenier, he helped nurture the careers of such south Louisiana artists as Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet and Marc and Ann Savoy.
He and Les Blank produced two important documentaries of traditional music: “Chulas Fronteras,” a 1975 film about the Mexican-American music of Texas, and “J’ai Été Au Bal,” a 1989 film about the Cajun and Creole music of southwest Louisiana.
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a National Heritage Fellowship in 2000. The Recording Academy gave him its Trustees Award in 2016.
“No one has meant more to the preservation and appreciation of Americana roots music than Chris Strachwitz,” Bonnie Raitt wrote in “Arhoolie Records’ Down Home Music: The Photographs and Stories of Chris Strachwitz,” a book to be published by Chronicle Books this October.
Smithsonian Folkways acquired the Arhoolie Records catalog in 2016. The Arhoolie Foundation, the nonprofit Strachwitz founded in 1995, will continue its work of preserving and documenting traditional music.