Louie Bluie

Well before he began filming idiosyncratic feature films like Ghost World and Bad Santa, director Terry Zwigoff played old-timey music with the Cheap Suit Serenaders, a band led by cartoonist Robert Crumb. Zwigoff went on to make an acclaimed documentary about Crumb, but his 1985 debut was this charming look at Howard Armstrong, aka Louie Bluie, whose “State Street Rag” had been a Serenader favorite. Age 75 at the time, Armstrong, a native Tennessean then living in Chicago, was adept at fiddle and violin, and several segments here show him playing “string band music”—a blend of country, folk, blues, and Dixieland—with cohorts on banjo, bass, and guitar. The music is delightful, but it's the interaction between these men that really makes the film sing (after one tune, Armstrong says to a listener, “How do you like that, Brother Rachell?” The reply: “Well, it'll do. But I have seen better”). Armstrong himself is a colorful raconteur; as critic Michael Sragow says in his liner notes, “The way he talks is as juicy as the way he plays.” Armstrong is also a painter and a poet, and a scene in which he shows a friend his magnum opus, an elaborate tome he calls The ABCs of Pornography, is a highlight (describing one fellow's reaction to his bawdy drawings, Armstrong reports that “he got harder than a Chinese arithmetic problem”). DVD extras include Zwigoff's audio commentary, bonus footage, a stills gallery, and illustrations by Armstrong. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (S. Graham)