Exhibit: Cuca Records Collection
We have a new exhibit in Mills Music Library celebrating the completion of the finding aid for our Cuca Records Collection, which is part of our Wisconsin Music Archives. Matt Appleby, Music Technical Services Librarian, has been working on this a long time and now everyone may benefit from his efforts! The finding aid provides the full contents and a historical note. The exhibit is in the large display case in our reading room, and includes selections Appleby chose to highlight: photographs, correspondence, and records, which are also listed in our Cuca Records Database.
The Cuca Records Collection contains papers, electronic files, and commercial sound recordings produced by the Cuca Record Corp. and American Music Corp. of Sauk City, Wisconsin, and its owner, James Kirchstein. The company produced old-time, rock, folk, blues and gospel recordings largely by Wisconsin artists, with most produced between 1959 and 1973.
Cuca Records began operations in 1959 as a recording studio and record label in Sauk City, owned and operated by James Kirchstein. With equipment purchased from the defunct Pfau label in Milwaukee, Cuca Records offered artists a full package of services: recording, disc pressing and LP jacket design, printing and shrink-wrapping. Kirchstein recorded any artist interested in making a record–mostly Wisconsin-based musical acts. He recorded principally old-time artists, but also blues, rock, folk and gospel. The company issued recordings under various labels such as Cuca, Sara, Polka Dot, Night Owl and Top Gun Country. Cuca had success early with the Fendermen’s recording of “Mule Skinner Blues” in 1960, which enabled Kirchstein to build a new recording studio he designed himself.
In 1973, with a decline of public interest in old-time music, and increasing costs of record production, Kirchstein moved away from producing new recordings, focusing instead on reissuing and marketing his existing catalog in other formats (cassettes and eventually compact discs). He reorganized the company, renaming it American Music Corporation, mainly issuing a small number of new recordings on the American and AMC labels, as well as reissuing the Cuca catalog and old time recordings originally issued by Pfau Sound and Recording Studios, and by Wright Records. Under the new company name, Kirchstein managed licensing deals of Cuca recordings to other record labels and established an online presence to sell his recordings.
In 2019, Kirchstein sold the company, including the original master tapes, to Numero Group, an archival record label based in Chicago that creates compilations of previously released music, reissues original albums, and creates album reconstructions from a variety of musical genres. So far, Numero has released compilations such as Driftless Dreamers: In Cuca Country, Eccentric Soul: The Cuca Label, and The New Smooth and Different Sound, a collection of unreleased demos by The Chieftones and both sides of their Cuca 45rpm record: Do Lord / I Shouldn’t Have Did What I Done. They’ve also reissued records such as Birdlegs, the 1964 album by Birdlegs and Pauline (Sidney Banks and Pauline Shivers), with Numero using the title from the spine: Birdlegs and Pauline. These releases are now also part of our Cuca Records Collection, and we will continue acquiring future releases as we preserve the legacy of what James Kirchstein created.