Mag lucid soul skill1/10/2024 So they invited some of us who had maybe traveled a little bit more – I’d been to Argentina because of my dad – or whatever and brought us in to make the student population more diverse. But my freshman year, they decided that wasn’t a great atmosphere. “The typical student moved on to graduate schools and earned a doctorate. “It was a wonderful school,” Angela says. She attended Carlton College in Northfield, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb that’s main claim to fame is that it’s the place where Jesse James and the Cole Younger Gang tried and failed to rob the First National Bank, an event that’s considered to be the final major event of the Civil War. But just like the bass, I was never proficient enough to say: ‘Oh, I play this.’ No…I was just hoping to jam with folks with the same expertise.” “The guitar is too complicated for me,” she jokes today. But her interest in music was so strong that she started playing bass – an easy transition from cello. In high school, she tried out for the choir but failed to make the cut. I was completely ignorant about it, didn’t know what to call it - and I just had to start investigating.”īlues records were extremely hard to come by, so Strehli resorted to mail order to build up a collection of – what to her – were priceless 45s. It’s gotcha! And that’s what happened to me. “The thing about the blues is that it can just grab you, and you don’t have a defense. “I heard something that I couldn’t figure out. (John Richbourg) and The Hossman (Bill “Hoss” Allen) on WLAC in Nashville, too” – and the sounds of Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and other giants grabbed her attention. “I got Shreveport, La., that had a blues show,” she remembers, “and there was Wolfman Jack…wherever the hell he was at…and (deejays) John R. She spent her nights hovering over her Zenith shortwave radio, which served as a gateway to the sounds she couldn’t hear at home. Strehli began life playing cello in her junior high school orchestra, a group that included Ely on violin. “And what’s true about Texas is that there’s a whole spectrum of music from jazz to country, and everybody had their own little pockets of interest.”īack then, however, the blues were something foreign that bubbled under the surface in the form of the azure-tinted western swing that had been produced by the Light Crust Doughboys, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies, Spady Cooley and others who filled dancehalls prior to World War II. Like most folks who grew up in smaller, isolated communities at the time, “we had to make our our entertainment,” Angela remembers. Other artists who rose to fame from roots in the city’s soil include Mac Davis, accordionist Ponty Bone, sax player Bobby Keys and Delbert McClinton, too. Not only did rock-‘n’-roll legend Buddy Holly soar to the heights during her childhood, but the city’s also produced Joe Ely, her junior high classmate, and future country stars Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. 22, 1945, the daughter of a professor father who taught Spanish at Texas Tech and a mother who ran a daycare out of the family home, Angela grew up in a community with a rich musical heritage. If you’re Angela Strehli, the undisputed Queen of Texas Blues, you go into the studio and cut a record that soars to the top of the charts!Īs fans and critics alike around the globe agree, it’s a welcome return to center stage for Angela, one of the most soft-spoken, unassuming folks in the industry despite a background that includes being one of the most important figures in the development of the Austin blues scene.īlues Blast caught up with her a few weeks ago while she was catching her breath at home in Nicasio, Calif., enjoying a momentary break from the onslaught of weather that had been inundating the West Coast for weeks and recovering from her first tour in ages.īorn in Lubbock, Texas, on Nov. What do you do if you’re a singer who’s been comfortably retired from touring for decades, during which you’ve been operating a successful restaurant/nightclub, and your hubby gently suggests it’s time for you to make another solo album after a 17-year break? We have eight Blues music reviews for you this week including new music from Larkin Poe, Johnny Rawls, Richard Gibbs, Mark Margolies, South Island Rhythm Kings, Little Freddie King, John Lee Hooker and Patrik Jansson. Marty Gunther has our feature interview with Angela Strehli.
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