The Louie Bluie Festival Offers Diversity Dimensions

My volunteer involvement with an annual festival here in Campbell County, Tenn., called the Louie Bluie Festival is just one of many examples throughout Loretto of efforts to make good things happen in communities.

The annual Louie Bluie Festival honors the life and legacy of Howard Armstrong (stage name “Louie Bluie”), an African- American man raised in the town of LaFollette in Campbell County in the 1920s and ’30s. Howard left LaFollette to pursue music and became an internationally known blues and string musician, an accomplished artist and a Renaissance man. He spoke seven languages fluently, including Italian and Polish, which he learned in his early life from immigrants working on the railroads and coke ovens in the area.

“Rediscovered” by a local history group in the late ’90s, Howard was welcomed back in this almost entirely white Appalachian county. He gave concerts, shared his music and life experience in workshops in schools, had a street named after him and then died in 2003 at the age of 94. For the past 10 years, the Campbell County Culture Coalition has sponsored a rousing festival of roots music of all kinds in his memory and as a celebration of local art and culture. The 10th annual festival in late September featured four stages of music — blues, jazz, old-time fiddling, swing and a mix of other Americana — with diverse local and visiting musicians, including Armstrong’s son Ralphe, who plays with the Armstrong Legacy Trio. Festival grounds were dotted with local craft venders, art exhibits from local schools and adults, quilt exhibits, stilt walkers at the Kids Fun Zone and more.

Some local folks call it the most positive thing that happens in Campbell County each year! The festival is staffed entirely by volunteers. It takes more than 150 volunteers for set-up and to staff venues on the day of the festival. I’ve been privileged the last few years to be volunteer coordinator and to serve with an amazingly creative and dedicated group of local leaders to make something good happen in this often maligned, low-income Appalachian county.