T-Model Ford

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When your career doesn’t start until your 58th birthday, it’s a good thing you’ve still got it going on when you’re in your 80s. T-Model Ford didn’t even make his first recording until he was 75 when he produced the first of four albums on the Fat Possum label. Ford was born James Lewis Carter Ford on a farm in Forest, Mississippi. His fifth wife gave him his first guitar on his 58th birthday so he decided to try his own rendition of the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Next thing you know he’s playing, and fighting, on Nelson Street. 

Ford has always been able to handle himself and spent time in and out of jails, including serving the first two years of a 10-year sentence for murder. When asked about how much time he’s spent in jail, Ford answered, “Every Saturday night there for awhile.” His life had always been rough. By age 11 he was plowing fields behind a mule for a father who didn’t let him go out at all, not even to go to school, until he was 17. Before being a musician he worked in a sawmill, drove a truck, and worked in a logging camp. Now Ford plays in the loose, “front porch” blues style of the early 20th century. He performs seated, grinding out fuzzy guitar riffs, stamping on the floor, and moaning words that defy formal language. “They tell me I’m 86 years ol’, but I’m still a ladies man.”