Producer Leah Mahan

60 minutes

In Distribution

Sweet Old Song documents the unlikely romance between two engaging African-American artists, a 92-year-old fiddler from rural Tennessee and a 61-year-old sculptor from Boston. Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong has been performing for more than 80 years and is the last in a tradition of black string band musicians who toured the country before World War II.

In 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts honored him with a National Heritage Fellowship Award and declared him a national treasure. Howard’s recollections of his life are rich with the history of the 20th century, and this is vividly reflected in his music and paintings. Since the early 1980s, he has been collaborating on visual art and music projects.

With his partner, Barbara Ward, a fabric artist, percussionist and former dancer. The film charts a journey of celebration and sadness as they take on life’s challenges with humor, grace and feisty stubbornness. Throughout the program, they perform Howard’s broad repertoire of American music together, including gospel, blues, swing and country.

The documentary brings us into the world of an aging artist whose spirit refuses to be hindered by time. Howard stubbornly struggles against the inevitability of age with the help of Barbara. Their life together is filled with the creation and sharing of their art, stories, and music.

Since the mid-1990s, Barbara has put aside her work as a fabric artist to care for Howard, help him continue as a performing artist (as manager, percussionist and backup vocalist), build a retrospective of his paintings, and work with him on an illustrated children’s book about her childhood. The camera follows them unobtrusively in their daily lives – from their lighthearted ribbing over domestic chores to Howard’s deep sadness over the death of his last surviving sibling. The loss of his brother sends them on a bittersweet journey to Howard’s hometown.
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