Tag: Chris Strachwitz Interview
Harry Choates Interview – Cajun
Harry Choates was a complete musician and entertainer. All of his life he ate, drank, and slept music. It is sometimes difficult to unravel the facts and myths surrounding the life and times of the man who immortalized Jole Blon, a song many Cajuns claim as their national anthem.
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DL Menard Interview
The late Cajun musician D.L. Menard’s biggest hit was “La Porte En Arrière” (“The Back Door”) which he wrote. He was often called “the Cajun Hank Williams”. In this interview from around 1988, Chris Strachwitz, Maureen Gosling, and Les Blank talk to D.L. about his first guitar, Cajun music, meeting Hank Williams, world travel, song writing, and making chairs.
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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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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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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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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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Tejano Musician Andres Berlanga
“I started playing guitar, I didn’t know nothing about guitar, I was hard labor man working on construction and all that then I come to think, this man can do it I guess I can do it too and I tried it and I tried it and I got on it.”
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Adolph Hofner Interview
“There wasn’t very many such things as guitars back in community I lived with, it was all brass and drums and tubas and vice-versa; but what got me interested in that was the steel guitars, I like the way they whine, you know? Also, see them in the Sears Roebuck catalogue and I figured it could be easy to play.”
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