Louie Bluie conveys, in its very texture, the vitality and uniqueness of its subject. Howard Armstrong, as the leader of America's last Black string band, is the exemplar of a forgotten genre of American music, but one which influenced jazz, gospel, ragtime, western swing and rock-and-roll. Born 76 years ago in rural Tennessee, Armstrong is a genius on the fiddle and mandolin; but he is also a cartoonist and a painter, a thinker and an observer, and a raconteur par excellence. Bay Area filmmaker Terry Zwigoff allows the stories, pictures and music of this rural Renaissance man speak for themselves, carrying the film into the realms of the sacred and the profane, where Armstrong seems equally comfortable. Armstrong is at once a totally unique character, yet one who personally embodies the living tradition of rural Black American culture. Of course this is nowhere truer than in his music, and the film features extraordinary performance sequences.