Biography
Country bluesman Howard Armstrong entered the world on March 4, 1909, in Dayton, TN, as one of eleven siblings. During childhood he assembled his opening fiddle by stretching horsehair across a goods box. After sharpening his abilities inside the family ensemble, he started appearing in his teens with Knoxville musicians Ted Bogan and Carl Martin through outfits such as the Tennessee Chocolate Drops and the Four Aces. The groups departed from the period’s convention that restricted Black artists to material from the segregated race-music catalogs; instead they drew on old-time jigs, reels, waltzes, rags, and minstrel standards alongside contemporary jazz, blues, and Tin Pan Alley numbers.
The Chocolate Drops reached radio listeners in 1930 and recorded their initial tracks for Vocalion. Throughout the Depression the three musicians—Howard, Bogan, and Martin—stayed on the road across the Appalachian circuit and joined a medicine show led by Dr. Leon D. Bondara. By the early 1930s they had settled in Chicago, performing regularly on the Southside and at the Maxwell Street flea market; earnings from tips kept them in hardship, prompting them to begin “pullin’ doors,” which meant performing in stores and taverns within white immigrant neighborhoods where Armstrong’s childhood command of Italian, Polish, and German—acquired while growing up in multi-ethnic La Follette—gained access denied to most other Black performers.
Radio’s rising dominance and the spread of jukeboxes ended Armstrong’s steady professional work by the close of the decade, yet folk-music researchers revived interest in his scattered recordings during the 1970s, prompting a reunion with Bogan and Martin for appearances on college campuses, in coffeehouses, and at festivals. Following Martin’s death in 1978 the remaining pair persisted, becoming the focus in 1985 of the feature documentary Louie Bluie, directed by Terry Zwigoff. Its soundtrack combined fresh recordings with 1930s sides, exposing Armstrong’s music to fresh audiences. He kept performing into the new millennium. In 1996 he married his manager and drummer, Barbara Ward, and settled in her hometown of Boston. His solo release Louie Bluie received a W.C. Handy award from the Blues Foundation the preceding year. Armstrong died on July 30, 2003, at age 94, from complications of a heart attack suffered in March.
The Chocolate Drops reached radio listeners in 1930 and recorded their initial tracks for Vocalion. Throughout the Depression the three musicians—Howard, Bogan, and Martin—stayed on the road across the Appalachian circuit and joined a medicine show led by Dr. Leon D. Bondara. By the early 1930s they had settled in Chicago, performing regularly on the Southside and at the Maxwell Street flea market; earnings from tips kept them in hardship, prompting them to begin “pullin’ doors,” which meant performing in stores and taverns within white immigrant neighborhoods where Armstrong’s childhood command of Italian, Polish, and German—acquired while growing up in multi-ethnic La Follette—gained access denied to most other Black performers.
Radio’s rising dominance and the spread of jukeboxes ended Armstrong’s steady professional work by the close of the decade, yet folk-music researchers revived interest in his scattered recordings during the 1970s, prompting a reunion with Bogan and Martin for appearances on college campuses, in coffeehouses, and at festivals. Following Martin’s death in 1978 the remaining pair persisted, becoming the focus in 1985 of the feature documentary Louie Bluie, directed by Terry Zwigoff. Its soundtrack combined fresh recordings with 1930s sides, exposing Armstrong’s music to fresh audiences. He kept performing into the new millennium. In 1996 he married his manager and drummer, Barbara Ward, and settled in her hometown of Boston. His solo release Louie Bluie received a W.C. Handy award from the Blues Foundation the preceding year. Armstrong died on July 30, 2003, at age 94, from complications of a heart attack suffered in March.
Albums
