Blogorium Review: Louie Bluie

For those of you who think documentaries have to be somber or (shudder), dull, the Cap'n humbly points you in the direction of Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World)'s debut film, Louie Bluie. His subject - real name Howard Armstrong - was a Tennessee born, Chicago based bluesman, artist, poet, and genuine personality. Zwigoff discovered Armstrong while collecting 78 records from the 1930s, and as luck had it, "Louie Bluie" was alive and kicking in 1985. The end result of Zwigoff and Armstrong meeting is an immensely entertaining documentary about the "old time" music, at a point when the "old timers" were still around to tell it in person.

Louie Bluie is as much a character study as it is a documentary; Armstrong spends most of his time playing music and telling stories. As a musician, he's a hot-dogger of a mandolin player. Whether he's at home playing for Zwigoff or in front of a crowd, he has a habit of flipping the instrument over his head and playing blind. His fiddle solo during a concert nearly steals the show from the headliner, although it's hard not to pay attention to the singer, who announces "I wrote this song in 1929, when I was thirty years old."

When Armstrong isn't playing, he's chatting it up with just about anybody around. After a few songs, he begins joking with bandmate Ted Bogan about women and clothes, and ribs another friend about eating all of the chicken while they were playing. His joy of life is infectious: when Armstrong travels back to LaFollette, Tennessee (where he grew up), he stops to chat with anyone he sees, telling stories an reminiscing. While visiting his sister-in-law ("I don't care how many times she's been married; she's still my sister-in-law."), a gospel tune is followed by an innuendo riddled anecdote about woodpeckers Armstrong told in church as a boy.

There's an amusing encounter with a record-collector (not unlike the type that populate Seymour's party in Ghost World) after a performance in a Chicago night club, followed by Armstrong wandering around town and shopping at a street fair. An encounter with an old man selling perfumes is cause to share the story of how his band The Tennessee Chocolate Drops ended up as the musical accompaniment for a Hindu Snake Oil Salesman.

His experience with immigrant communities helped Armstrong and the band learn to speak Italian, French, and Hungarian well enough to perform popular songs and emulate styles of the Old World. And I haven't even mentioned his paintings, poems, self bound books, or The ABC's of Pornography, a tome he proudly shows off to a banjo playing friend. Armstrong, 66 when the film was made, seems to be as spry as any man half his age, and he and the boys are happy playing in front of a paying audience or on a street corner.

What's so very impressive about Louie Bluie is that Zwigoff manages to impart all of this about Armstrong in just sixty minutes. On top of that, he also intercuts anecdotal history with vintage footage of other blues acts from the 30s and 40s to contextualize what Armstrong is saying. While Louie Bluie isn't intended to be a comprehensive history of the blues in America, one still comes away with an impression that Armstrong, as fascinating a subject as he is, isn't all we've learned about. The film is a tremendous breath of fresh air considering that it addresses Jim Crow, poverty, and old age in various forms.

If you've seen Crumb, then you have some idea of the access that Zwigoff has to his subject, and I was quite impressed with how open Howard Armstrong is during the film. It's also nice to see a film that's about the early twentieth century from the perspective of people who lived through it, who aren't somber or shrinking away from the camera. Howard "Louie Bluie"* Armstrong was happy enough to let Terry Zwigoff into his home, and I'm happy to have been privy to the result. Check this film out as soon as possible.