Waubonsee Community College

Sweet old song, by Leah Mahan

eng

videorecording

For College; Adult audiences

Sweet old song

electronic resource

747797328

by Leah Mahan

57

Acclaimed African American musician Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, 91, is renowned for a lifetime of jazz, blues, folk and country music. He has been performing since the 1920s, when his father carved his first fiddle from a wooden crate. The National Endowment for the Arts has honored him as a "national treasure." But when Armstrong at 73 met Barbara Ward, a sculptor thirty years his junior, a new chapter of his life and art unfolded. Sweet Old Song is the story of Armstrong and Ward s courtship and marriage -- a unique partnership that inspired an outpouring of art and music. Their creative work draws on nearly a century of African American experience, beginning with Armstrong s vivid stories and paintings of his childhood in a segregated town in Tennessee. A tireless artist and collaborator, Ward encourages Armstrong to document their memories in paintings and illustrations for a children s book. For Armstrong, these recollections reach back to a pre-World War II era of black string bands when, along with his younger brothers, he performed on the street and at white society dances. Armstrong s recollections take on added poignancy when he is invited to his hometown of LaFollette, Tennessee, which declares a Howard Armstrong Day in his honor. The visit is bittersweet as he reminisces with old neighbors, and is honored at the local high school, which was closed to black students when he was a child

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