Chicago Archives - The Arhoolie Foundation

The Chris Strachwitz Collection

As founder of both Arhoolie Records and the Arhoolie Foundation, Chris Strachwitz has been collecting, documenting, recording, and promoting regional roots music for over 60 years....

Sacred Steel Archive: Jeannette Eason Interview

Tough, strong-willed and big hearted, Jeannette Davis Eason was a truly remarkable woman and a major factor in Willie Eason’s success as a musician and businessman.

Stanley Willis Interview

Stanley Willis was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 15, 1922. His mother played piano, and Stanley remembered musicians coming to the house to rehearse when he was just a small child. He recalled being passed around “like a loaf of bread” by a group of old women and placed in front of the church piano at the age of four.

Chris Strachwitz 1962 Article

[feather_share] International Blues Record Club Bulletin Vol. 2 No. 1 December 1962 Searching for music in 1962 with Chris Strachwitz Now, that the commercials...

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...

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.”

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.”

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.’”

Fred and Rose Maddox Interview

“I had about 10 pounds in my sack and I sat down and just started thinking…’Fred, what are you doing back there?’ I said, ‘I’m thinking.’ ‘What are you thinking?’ I said, ‘I’m thinking let’s go into the music business.”

Staple Singers Interview

“…he wanted us to sing blues. He said, Mavis can make a lot of money if we sang blues. I didn’t want to sing blues.” – Roebuck Staples

Location: Chicago