The Louie Bluie Music and Arts Festival is named in honor of Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong (1909 - 2003) who grew up in Campbell County, influenced by the many genres of music common to the area, and became one of the nation's finest black string-­‐band musicians, a recipient of NEA’s National Heritage Fellowship, and the Tennessee Governor's Folk Heritage Award. “Louie Bluie” was an accomplished musician, painter, and storyteller, who created ethnic jewelry, mastered seven foreign languages and 22 musical instruments, and traveled the world.

Although his father was steadily employed as an iron furnace worker in LaFollette, Howard's childhood was marked by poverty. Urged by an innate sense of art, by the age of seven Howard was fashioning paint brushes from cat hair (plucked from the tails of unsuspecting cats) and paints made from berries and crepe paper fished out of trash bins, while teaching himself to paint. Ambidextrous, he was quite capable of drawing simultaneously with both hands. He loved bright colors, used them generously in paintings -­‐ later in his personal style of dress -­‐ all his life.

More Information and schedules can be found HERE