Restrictions to Access

Use of audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Mike Hortig and Heinz Kratochwill Collection #20536-z, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Mike Hortig, of Graz, Austria, in December 2016 (Acc. 102994).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Anne Wells, March 2017

Encoded by: Anne Wells, March 2017

Archival processing of the Mike Hortig and Heinz Kratochwill Collection was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Blues (music)--Southern States.
• Chatmon, Sam.
• Cooper, Trenton, 1923-2001.
• Guitar music (Blues)
• Hortig, Mike.
• Kratochwill, Heinz.
• Piano music (Blues)
• Thomas, Son, 1926-1993.
• Webb, Boogie Bill.
• Willis, Mott.

Mike Hortig is a boogie-woogie and blues pianist from Graz, Austria that has been researching blues music since the 1970s. In May of 1980, Hortig met folklorist William R. Ferris at a celebration held at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss. At the event, Ferris introduced Hortig to artist and musician, James "Son" Thomas. Following his return to Austria, Hortig and his friend Heinz Kratochwill planned a four-week-long trip to the American South to record, interview, and photograph blues musicians. During their 1981 field recording trip, Hortig and Kratochwill visited twenty-eight musicians across the South and documented twenty-one of them. Some of their field recordings were issued on WOLF records in Vienna, Austria.

The Mike Hortig and Heinz Kratochwill Collection consists of field recordings and photographs of American blues musicians from 1981. Austrian boogie-woogie and blues pianist, Mike Hortig, compiled the materials with his friend, Heinz Kratochwill, during a four-week-long trip to the American South. The audio recordings and photographs capture blues pianists and guitarists, including Trenton Cooper, James "Son" Thomas, Boogie Bill Webb, Mott Willis, Sam Chatmon, and others. Field recordings are on audiocassette and digitial audio files, while photographs consist of digital scans of color photographic prints. Also included in the collection is a handwritten track listing found with one of the field recordings.

• Audiocassettes (FS-20536/1-12)