Review: Photographic Glimpses at 20th Century Roots Music

Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz's photos document blues, country, and Cajun music.

In 1959, a California schoolteacher and blues fanatic named Chris Strachwitz got word that Lightnin' Hopkins was living and playing in Houston. Strachwitz drove to Texas as soon as he could, loved what he heard, and returned the next year with a tape recorder. Before he knew it, he was running a music label.

That company, Arhoolie, was a labor of love: Joel Selvin writes in the new book Down Home Music that a critic once "told Strachwitz that he didn't have a record label—he had a hobby." Whatever you call it, it was an essential resource for fans of blues, norteño, Cajun, country, and other sorts of vernacular music.

Strachwitz, who died last year at age 91, took a camera on his travels. Down Home Music collects scores of his photos with his context-setting captions. ("Houston had no zoning laws or licensing requirements," Strachwitz writes beside a picture of Hopkins playing in what looks like a kitchen, "so they had these beer joints in somebody's house in the middle of the street.") It's a vivid celebration of the creativity happening off the cultural radar screen—and of a niche business that made this music more widely available.