T-Model Ford

The blues won’t ever die, and sometimes it seems that T-Model Ford won’t, either. He was born during the early ’20s (or so he thinks) and didn’t pick up a guitar until he was in his late 50s. He took to it quickly, but it would be another 15 years before his discovery by Fat Possum Records, alongside Mississippi brethren R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Othar Turner. Ford plays a hypnotic, chugging brand of blues, even if he’s situated more at the intersection of ramshackle hill rumble and the electric Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. His weathered baritone isn’t as flamboyant as Wolf’s, though he’s not above the occasional midsong yelp, and his youthful stories mark him as an irascible, hard-loving hellion. Despite adding a pacemaker to his tour get-up two years ago, he’s still going strong, supporting his eighth album: an entirely acoustic release titled The Ladies Man.