For guitarists (and others)

The latest e-newsletter from the Fretboard Journal (FJ) is entitled 'Ten things we love right now'. The list includes:

• A video (also on YouTube) of the 1936 Martin D-18 shown on the cover (right) of Norman Blake's album Whiskey before breakfast, being played by Chris Eldridge, Bob Minner, Kenny Smith, and Bryan Sutton. The FJ says of the video: 'This is basically a 45-minute-long love letter to a guitar and it's full of insights on Blake.'
• A raffle ($25 a ticket) for a new Jackson Cunningham slope-shoulder jumbo guitar, which is fully described here;
• The news that Rhiannon Giddens has won a Pulitzer Prize for her opera Omar, and has just announced her next album, You're the one, due for release on 18 Aug. 2023 and available for pre-order.
• The life of Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, who died last Friday (5 May) at the age of 91.

The FJ includes a link to David Katznelson's 'The down home music man', a fine obituary of Chris Strachwitz, concentrating on the many blues and zydeco artists he recorded, but also mentioning the first album by Del McCoury (left) as a bandleader. For a much fuller account of the debt bluegrass and related music owes to Arhoolie recordings, see Richard Thompson's major obituary of him on Bluegrass Today, with no fewer than twenty-three embedded videos from YouTube.

Update 12 May: Daniel Sheehy, director and curator emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, which took over the Arhoolie catalogue, has a major article celebrating Chris Strachwitz on the Smithsonian website.

© Richard Hawkins