1. Chris Strachwitz was the founder and president of Arhoolie Records, which he established in 1960 and which became one of the leading labels recording and issuing blues, Cajun, norteno, and other forms of roots music from the United States and elsewhere in the world.
The Strachwitz family settled temporarily with relatives in Braunschweig, in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany, where he first heard swing music played on Armed Forces Radio.
Chris Strachwitz became interested in jazz after seeing the movie New Orleans, starring Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, and began collecting jazz records.
Chris Strachwitz became a United States citizen and was drafted into the US Army in 1954, just after the Korean War, being stationed in Salzburg, Austria, from where he continued to see touring jazz shows.
Chris Strachwitz worked as a high school teacher in Los Gatos for three years from 1959.
Chris Strachwitz recorded "Black Ace" Turner, "Li'l Son" Jackson and Whistlin' Alex Moore on the same trip, and later in the year recorded Big Joe Williams and Mercy Dee Walton in California.
Chris Strachwitz stopped teaching that year and moved back to Berkeley, to devote himself to developing the record business.
Chris Strachwitz continued travelling to make field recordings of blues musicians, notably Mississippi Fred McDowell, Juke Boy Bonner, K C Douglas, and Clifton Chenier.
Chris Strachwitz recorded the band singing "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die", and gained a share of the song's publishing rights.
Chris Strachwitz won royalties for Fred McDowell from the Rolling Stones' performance of his song "You Gotta Move" on their Sticky Fingers album.
Chris Strachwitz continued to secure the rights to release archive blues material such as that by Snooks Eaglin and Robert Pete Williams.
Chris Strachwitz increasingly focused attention on Mexican and, specifically, norteno music, which he had long admired, building up what is believed to be the largest private collection of Mexican-American and Mexican music.
Chris Strachwitz discovered and released the first two albums of seminal klezmer revival band The Klezmorim.
In 2013, Chris Strachwitz saw HowellDevine performing live and signed them to Arhoolie for the two albums that followed.
In 1993, Chris Strachwitz received a lifetime achievement award from the Blues Symposium for his role in preserving the blues, and in 1999 was inducted as a non-performing member of the Blues Hall of Fame.
Chris Strachwitz was a recipient of a 2000 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.