Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection: The Journey Of Chris Strachwitz 1960-2000
5 CD SetI found this set at the library discard sale. I had no idea what it was but at 50 cents for a 5 CD set I figured, "What the heck!" It looked like some kind of blues collection, but I had never heard of Arhoolie records so when I got home I looked up the collection on Amazon and found the following editorial review:
"Superbly packaged and lovingly annotated, the five-disc Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Collection distills four decades of musical passion into six hours of highlights. The passion is that of Arhoolie founder Chris Strachwitz, a German immigrant and former California schoolteacher whose label reflects a devotion to American roots music at its most vital and varied. Southern bluesmen Mance Lipscomb and Fred McDowell, Louisiana zydeco kingpin Clifton Chenier, and Tex-Mex conjunto accordionist Flaco Jimenez are just a few of the regional mainstays to achieve national renown through Arhoolie, and all of them are represented here.
The spirited diversity of the 105 selections (including 13 available on CD for the first time) finds the label extending its reach from string-band country (Hackberry Ramblers) to hard-driving jazz (Jerry Hahn Quintet) to New Orleans brass bands to more recent forays into "sacred steel," featuring gospel music with pedal-steel guitar. Where so many folk preservations might as well be embalming musical relics, Arhoolie champions "vernacular music": music that retains a strong, integral connection to its community and gets people clapping, stomping, and dancing. Throughout the set, the immediacy of the performances transcends trendiness or timeliness, showing how America sounds beyond the plasticity of popular culture."
This is not the kind of slick production music we get out of the major record labels, but rather real people playing real music not for the money, but just for the joy of doing it. It will take me a while to get trough all 5 CD, but what I have listened to so far has a real organic feel to it that really grows on you. There is just something infectious out music played by someone who plays just because they have a passion for what they are doing.
