This quick documentary is an informal profile, a filmed hangout and the result of blues 78 collector Terry Zwigoff’s important discovery, not just of a man’s music, but of the man himself. Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong of Dayton, Tennessee is in his mid-70s here, wise as a sage, crazy in the right ways, a lover of music and women and full of a much younger man’s energy. He’s played blues, country and traditional Italian music in barns, barrelhouses and medicine shows. Of a life fully lived, he’s got a stack of stories high as the Smoky Mountains and he knows how to tell them. A bunch of them are probably even true. Many of his friends and bandmates are still around, as well. They’re men he’s known for over fifty years and when they’re together, they rip each other apart and make jokes that go for the jugular like only great friends can. When they pick up their guitars, the sound they make is joyful, even when the song is sad, and unchanged since the old days. The well further reveals its depth when Zwigoff shows us Armstrong’s other pursuits which include painting and a stunning handmade book about pornography that’s full of prose, dirty cartoons, naked pictures, color and passion—you know, some of the good things in life. Louie Bluie is one of those men who needs to live forever, be seen, heard and known even after his body gives it up (which it did in 2003 when he was 96). I’m glad Terry Zwigoff made this.