Angela Strehli: Lubbock’s Blues Architect
January 22, 2027
Today is the birthday of Angela Strehli. She is 81 today.
Angela Strehli was born in Lubbock, Texas on January 22, 1945. She could have stayed in West Texas. Instead, she moved to Austin in the late 1960s and helped build something from the ground up. Strehli co-founded Antone’s Records and became a central figure in the Austin blues revival of the 1970s and 1980s. She understood something the record labels hadn’t figured out yet: Austin had a blues scene worth taking seriously.
The Woman Behind the Scene
Strehli sang with a deep, authoritative voice that had absorbed Chicago, Delta, and Texas blues without sounding like any one of them. She recorded Soul Shake in 1987 and toured alongside Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lou Ann Barton, and Jimmie Vaughan. Her influence on the Austin sound runs deeper than most people realize. Antone’s wouldn’t have been Antone’s without her. Explore her place items on Texas Music Map.