ARHOOLIE FOUNDATION COLLECTIONS:Audio Interviews
Audio interviews by Chris Strachwitz during his research into the music he was recording for his label Arhoolie Records as well as for his radio programs on KPFA-FM (Berkeley, CA) in the 1960’s through 1980’s, and by Dr. Manuel Peña during his research for his several books on Mexican American music.
Bill Neely Interview
Bill Neely has been singing and picking guitar since 1929 when Jimmie Rodgers showed him a few basics. In the late 1940s he started writing his own songs and has been doing it ever since. The songs on this, Bill’s first album, are almost all his own compositions.
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Johnie Lewis Interview
“I said well Lord, if you let me live to see tomorrow I’m going to get me a guitar. That’s how I had my start. Then I went to Mrs. Patterson Pawn Shop”… “and I bought me a guitar with the name was Value. That’s the name of the guitar with pearl and ivory all around it. About a week, I was playing pretty good.”
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Little Joe Hernandez Interview 1991
Little Joe Hernández, from Temple, Texas, was born in 1940 and began his career as a musician in the late fifties, trying to break into the surging rock-and-roll market.
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Don Tosti Interview
Edmundo Martínez Tostado, whose stage name became Don Tosti, was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1923. He exhibited musical talent at an early age, and by his twelfth birthday he was playing violin with a local group, La Orquesta Muro.
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Leo Soileau Interview – Cajun Music
Leo Soileau was a traditional Cajun music pioneer. Listen to his 1974 interview with Arhoolie Records’ Chris Strachwitz to learn more about Cajun music history.
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Marcellus Thomas Interview – Blues
“I recorded Marcellus Thomas during my first session with Big Joe Williams in Los Gatos, CA – and I think it may have been Marcellus who drove Big Joe and his wife and child from Oakland down to my shack in the hills of Holy City where I was living that first year as a school teacher in Los Gatos…”
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John Littlejohn Interview – Blues
“So when I got 14 years old, my father won a guitar in a crap game. He asked me – He really didn’t give it to me. I’d catch him going from the house and I’d grab it, you know. The first tune I learned how to play was – I heard Lightning Hopkins playing this tune – ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go.’”
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Mercy Dee Walton Interview
“The blues to me was a way of getting rid of your trouble through your music. During those times when I started playing things kinda rugged, you know what I mean. A dollar or two was a great thing back then. I just started playing the blues.”
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Vern Williams & Ray Park Interview
Vern & Ray Interview: (14:44) LISTEN HERE: Vern & Ray Interviewed By: Chris Strachwitz Date: unknown Location: unknown Language: English [feather_share] This is an unedited interview originally recorded...
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Lalo Guerrero Interview 1989
Lalo Guerrero was without a doubt the most prolific musician-composer that Mexican America has ever produced. In his long and illustrious career, which spanned from the 1930s to the 2000s, Guerrero visited almost every musical genre circulating in the Hispanic Southwest.
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