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THE BOHEMIAN
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Lightnin’ sets up his amplifier on top of a table and plays for a dozen people at the most, a real funky, down-home audience. This was really community music. And that still goes on in certain musical enclaves. But blues, I sort of left that when I saw that it was no longer really appealing to blacks. But when I started, it was still definitely happening.� Strachwitz continues: “There were a lot of people out here from Louisiana and from Texas, you know. I always remember Rockin’ Lucky—he was a DJ on the old KSAN in San Francisco. It was an AM station at the time. This was in the early ’60s. He was from Orange, Texas. He would play my singles by Lightnin’ Hopkins, but you had to give him a hundred free ones because he had a record shop that he sold them to so he could make a little money on it. But he played the hell out of some Lightnin’ Hopkins records.� Strachwitz asks if I want to see the music vault. We walk outside and enter another building; he informs me that this is the digitization premises. There are two separate rooms where his Mexican music project is being digitized. Here work Adam Machado and Antonio Cuellar, Arhoolie employees and self less individuals with brains crammed full of musical erudition. Both Machado and Cuellar handle most of the vault, seeing to it that rare recordings find a digital birth. “Chris’ energy is very infectious,� Cuellar says. “You can’t help but fall in love with his love for music. You get convinced his whole being is music.� Machado practically lives in this vault of archival imbroglio, writing away and adhering to upcoming projects and events going on with Arhoolie. In fact, it was Machado who wrote the literature for the new box set, Hear Me Howling! Blues, Ballads and Beyond, out this week. The box set features unreleased and first-time-on-CD material from Big Mama Thornton, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Fred McDowell, Skip James and many others, and serves to mark the 50year anniversary of Arhoolie Records. Machado tells me, “Arhoolie isn’t just a store; it’s a museum. And Chris, you can ask him a question about Howlin’ Wolf, and all of a sudden you’re with Howlin’ Wolf barreling down a German highway.� Some time passes with Macahdo and Cuellar, and in the next room I discover Chris watching some news on the television. He admits to being a news hound. Then he takes a screwdriver to a small round container, peeling off some plastic, and hands me a weighty Lebkuchen cookie as a road token for my journey home. ‘Hear Me Howling!: Blues, Ballads and Beyond’ is out this week. The Arhoolie Foundation celebrates its 50th anniversary with a series of concerts and panels, featuring Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Country Joe McDonald, Linda Ronstadt and others, Friday–Sunday, Feb. 4–6, at Freight and Salvage. 2020 Addison St., Berkeley. 8pm. $75–$85. 510.644.2020.