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ARHOOLIE FOUNDATION COLLECTIONS:Ain’t No Mouse Blog

Ain’t No Mouse Blog presents stories from the Arhoolie Foundation’s extraordinary archive of American roots music and vernacular culture.

Featuring contributions from Foundation staff and interns, the blog features close looks at fascinating finds, updates on preservation projects, and curated highlights from across our collection of sound and video recordings, photographs, posters, papers, and more.

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The Ann Savoy Collection Goes Live

The Ann Savoy Collection Goes Live

The Arhoolie Foundation is proud to make available new audio interviews with legendary Cajun and Creole musicians from the Ann Savoy Interview Collection. Ann’s collection consists...

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Finding History on a Store Sticker

Finding History on a Store Sticker

By Juan Antonio Cuéllar, Frontera Collection Curator Throughout my 20 years of digitizing the Frontera Collection, I was always intrigued by the store stickers found on...

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Announcing the Irene Tenney Cajun and Creole Culture Collection

Announcing the Irene Tenney Cajun and Creole Culture Collection

By Clark Noone, Archivist  We’re excited to announce the new Irene Tenney Cajun and Creole Culture Collection at the Arhoolie Foundation! Featuring a wide array of...

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What a Difference a Date Makes

What a Difference a Date Makes

By John Leopold, Managing Director The Arhoolie Foundation collections contain a multitude of items that were acquired by a collector. Chris Strachwitz collected records, tapes, posters,...

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From San Antonio With Love

From San Antonio With Love

By Juan Antonio Cuéllar, Frontera Collection Curator Over my twenty-year span of digitizing the Frontera Collection as the Head Digitizing Engineer, many aspects of the collection...

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An Arhoolie Holiday Feast

An Arhoolie Holiday Feast

By Clark Noone, Archivist Tell me what you eat for the holidays, and I’ll tell you where you come from.  Okay, maybe it’s not that simple....

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The Blues Professor and His Dancing Dolls

The Blues Professor and His Dancing Dolls

By Jessica Luther, Archives Intern While sorting through the Strachwitz Photo Collection, I became intrigued by several photographs of blues harmonica player Johnny “J.C.” Burris posing...

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New Blog Shares Discoveries

New Blog Shares Discoveries

The Arhoolie Foundation introduces This Ain’t No Mouse Blog to present stories from the Arhoolie Foundation’s extraordinary archive of American roots music and vernacular culture. Featuring...

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The Blues on My Block: Discovering the Roots Music History of Downtown Berkeley

The Blues on My Block: Discovering the Roots Music History of Downtown Berkeley

By Kyle Jackson, Archives Intern I recently began working on a project to help catalog some of the treasure trove of recordings in the vaults at...

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A Demo in the Rough

A Demo in the Rough

By Juan Antonio Cuéllar, Frontera Collection Curator As the Head Digitizing Engineer of the Frontera Collection from 2002 until early 2022, I was fortunate to discover...

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Statement on the passing of Chris Strachwitz

Arhoolie Records Founder
July 1, 1931 – May 5, 2023

We celebrate the life of our founder, friend, and great record man Chris Strachwitz. He died peacefully at home in Marin County, CA, surrounded in his last days by dear friends and family. Over his 91 years, Chris captured the music that represents the best “down home music” the world has to offer.

He was at the forefront of nearly all the roots revivals over the last 60 years including blues, zydeco, Cajun, Norteño and Tejano music. His drive to document traditional music helped introduce the nation to our diverse musical heritage. He had the foresight to save music that might have otherwise been lost to obscurity and played a role in strengthening cultural traditions through his records, films, and most recently the Arhoolie Foundation. He cared for those around him, fought for royalties and recognition for Arhoolie artists, and provided counsel to countless musicians, writers, film makers, and academics.

Plans for a public celebration of his life will be announced in the coming weeks. Today we’re thinking of all that Chris brought to our lives and the lives of the musicians and fans with whom he shared his passion.

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