Genre: blues
Joe Pullum Interview
Blues singer Joe Pullum talks with Chris Strachwitz about the music scene in Houston, TX in the 1930’s and later in Los Angeles.
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Blues / Jazz / Gospel
Blues, Jazz & Gospel Whether collecting 78s and releasing them on the Blues Classics label or recording Lightning Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, Reverend Overstreet, Billie and...
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R.I.P. Paul oliver
R.I.P. Paul Oliver A note from Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records and the Arhoolie Foundation: “Paul was a remarkable person and devoted educator who taught...
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Earl Hooker Interview
“First I used to be a bad, bad, boy, run around with street gangs. After I got to playing music well all this here bad stuff got out of my mind and I got interested in playing music. My first guitar that I ever bought I bought from Sears and Roebuck. I paid a dollar down and fifty cent a week.”
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Johnie Lewis Interview – Blues
“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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1960 Journey to the South – Down South 1960 – The beginning of a record label.
In 1960 Chris Strachwitz was running a small mail order record service and newsletter called the International Blues Record Club (IBRC). In the summer of 1960...
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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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T-Bone Walker Interview – Blues
“To be the best, I’d have to stick with my style. I can’t get away from it. That’s the reason why I don’t do rock-n-roll, which they’ve been trying to get me to do it, but I’ll get away from my style.”
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