ABad OIe Mam'

At the age of 91, T-Model Ford claims the blues. But he sure can play them.
BY JON HAYW'OOD
is hands, ancient and weathered, tell a story of their own.

he doesn't

lifa

It is hard to believe that just

a year ago bluesman

T-Model Ford

suffered a stroke that nearly stripped his ability to strum his guitar

with those storied, wrinkled old hands.

The stroke made it difficult for Ford to ofhis body. But on a visit to the aging bluesman's Greenville home, you wouldnt know that Ford suffered any ailment at all. He sways and rocks with the guitar known as Black Nanny just as he always has. The sound of his down-home blues is just as good. It is smooth, pleasing and irreverent. Nothing
use the right side

about his music, like much of the Delta blues, seems manufactured. And when his fingers slide slyly along the strings and the sound wafts out onto the street, passing drivers slow and crane their necks and kids roaming the neighborhood stop in their tracks and grin. The music still has magic. You can easily imagine Ford playing his guitar in a smoky blues club with standing room only on Greenville's Nelson Street, a formerly thriving black
business and entertainment district, now reduced to a few clubs, a lot ofvacant storefronts, liquor stores and a few

Ford lived a life not too different from his contemporaries, working odd jobs here and there to support himself. At 11, he began working on his family farm, plowing the fields with mules. As a teenager, he got a job at a sawmill near Greenville. After working another sawmill job, he got work at a logging camp. It was at some time around the logging camp job that trouble began. On the website of his former record label, Fat Possum, Ford says, "I could really stomp some ass back then, stomp it good. I was a sure enough dangerous mani' Dangerous enough that Ford seemed to run into the law more times than he could keep track of. He says he got arrested for something "every Saturday night there for
a

for at Mississippi blues hot spots in

Clarksdale, at music festiva-ls around drc U.S. and overseas, and, if you're luch; au impromptu gig on Nelson Street. Ford now occasionally travels with the white, Seattle-based blues band GravelRoad. Ford has no formal management. So Martin Reinsel, the drummer for GravelRoad, looks after him, acting as a de facto manager. In )anuary, Ford released an album, "Taledraggeri' to much critical acdaim"Make no mistake, 'Taledragger'is a BLUES record with a capital BI said Tim Peacock of the U.K.-based music newsletter "Whisperin & Hollerin-"Based around grooves, grunts and

whilel' Now that Ford has aged

bit, he's not

guttural yelps, it's relentlessly real, lan@l somewhere between Howlin' Wolfk London Sessions and it's happy to sell its
soul at any crossroads pact you care to

churches.

stomping as much ass as he used to, but he's still got his fair share of troubles. He split with the Water Valley-based Fat Possum over a disagreement in 2010. He's found a new label, Alive Naturalsound
Records.

mentionl'
Nicknamed "Taledragger" by friend Paul Jones after a night ofplaying that guitar at a Belzoni blues club, Ford laughingly says the late Jones called him that because "I was hurtin' 'em so badHe was trying to play like me, so he sairl 'Taledragger!'" The way Ford remembers an old friend adds to his charm and authenticity as a Delta bluesman. Itt that extra somethiq that softens Ford in his old age, leaving

T-Model Ford,like the Mississippi Delta, is raw unwavering and mystical. Ford didnt pick up a guitar until his late 50s, at the urging of a friend. He didn't record a song until his 70s. No one really knows Ford's age. He says he's 91. Born James Lewis Carter Ford, sometime during or after l92O,in Forrest,

Ford may play the blues. But he doesnt care for the soul-binding troubles that inspire much of blues music. Ford says, "I play the blues. I dont like 'em. I play the
blues for the peoplesi' He can still be found playing that gritty style of Delta blues he's become famous

116

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO MAIN STREET?

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him to seem genteel and good-natured. He's at ease, vibrant and preternaturally exuberant for a man of 91 years. "l don't

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Ford iives in a scraggly old house in a run-down Greenville neighborhood that's seen better days. He now needs the help of his grandchildren to place the guitar around his shoulders and connect the amp. Those same cute little grandchildren sell T-Model CDs at $20 and $25 a PoP

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out of a tattered cardboard box. Ford is helping to raise some of his grarrdchildren. He's even taught l2-yearolds Stud and Littie Mama, as theY're cailed, to play the guitar. They help create a warmth in the Ford home, a warmth that comes from a legendary bluesman grandfather, a doting little grandmother and the giggles of children. T-Model Ford has, in the end, created a life for himself that he truly enjoys. A life Iilled with family, friends, music and the occasional bottle of whiskey. Even after a stroke, he brings the guitar to lif'e. It is easy to believe that nothing will slow down this venerable Delta bluesman.

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T-Model Ford is an old man with a dirty tongue, a taste for iack Daniels and fine women. He's outlived most of his

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his carport is in keeping with the scraggly house I A busted tail light on the vehicle in rundown neighllorhood where the bluesman lives.

r3OVE I Ford shows off a photo of himself in younSer days, decades before a stroke ,,ved hirn down.

Delta blues contemporaries. Ford is, as he puts it, "a bad oie manl' He's been married six times and just married the sixth wife, Stella Smith, a woman he'd dated for more than 20 years, in APril 2010. At 91 years o1d, Ford says he'll never die. And for whatever reason, that's almost believable.

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