T-Model Ford - I Was Born In A Swamp

Album: I Was Born In A Swamp
Size: 120,6 MB
Time: 52:14
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2021/2022
Styles: Blues
Art: Front

1. I Was Born In A Swamp (1:56)
2. Someone's Knocking On My Door (5:13)
3. Big Legged Woman (7:56)
4. Chicken Head Man (7:50)
5. I'm Coming To Kick Yer Asses (2:00)
6. Hip Shaking Woman (10:23)
7. My Babe (2:49)
8. Same Old Train (7:05)
9. I'm Coming Home (3:43)
10. Little Red Rooster (3:14)

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist T-Model Ford (James Lewis Carter Ford) played a raw-edged, visceral style of blues from the Mississippi Delta, accompanied much of the time by his drummer, Spam (Tommy Lee Miles). Ford caught a break when he opened up on a national tour for Buddy Guy and his band, playing respectable theaters and some festivals, but he was chronically under-recorded. He began playing guitar late in life and hadn't really toured much outside the Mississippi Delta until the 1990s and into the new millennium.

He was well received at Antone's nightclub in Austin during the South by Southwest Music Festival, at the Chicago Blues Festival, and on tour with Guy and his band. When not on the road, playing mostly blues nightclubs, T-Model Ford and Spam set their instruments and amps up on Nelson Street in Greenville, Mississippi, where they would play for as much as eight hours straight. Ford's sound was raw, unadulterated Delta blues, and the music on his albums tends to sound sparse but is very rhythmic, given that his sole accompanist was the drummer Spam.

His albums, all for the Fat Possum label, now based in Los Angeles, include Pee-Wee Get My Gun (1997), You Better Keep Still (1999), She Ain't None of Your'n (2000), and Bad Man (2002). After a six-year break from recording - though he toured regularly - Ford returned to the bins on the Alive imprint with Ladies Man in 2010; he followed it with Taledragger in 2011. Two years later, he died at home of respiratory failure after a short time in hospice care. /Biography by Richard Skelly, AllMusic

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T-Model Ford - She Ain't None Of Your'n

Size: 87.8 MB
Time: 37:09
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2000
Styles: Electric Delta Blues
Art: Full

01. She Asked Me So I Told Her (3:22)
02. Sail On (3:29)
03. Take A Ride With Me (3:21)
04. Chicken Head Man (4:00)
05. When Are You Coming Back Home (2:37)
06. Junk (3:22)
07. Leave My Heart Alone (3:19)
08. How Many More Years (3:59)
09. I Got A Home (2:06)
10. Wood Cuttin' Man (3:22)
11. Mother's Gone (3:54)
12. Whatever (0:13)

With this, his third release on Fat Possum Records, T-Model Ford takes his place as one of the label's elder statesmen, quite an accomplishment on a label loaded with septuagenarians.

Ford doesn't pull any punches on She Ain't None of Your'n. The electronic loops and beats that have slowly crept into so many of the label's recent blues releases are noticeably absent. Instead listeners are left with a strong collection of raw, timeless Delta blues.

As on Ford's previous albums, tracks range from the sublime (e.g., "Sail On") to the bizarre (e.g., "Chicken Head Man"), but even the most indulgent moments here are powered by strong grooves.

On most of the album's tracks, Ford's guitar and vocals are accompanied only by drums. He and longtime drummer Spam had a falling out during the recording of the album, so Bryan Barry and the legendary Sam Carr split drumming duties on about half the tracks. There is no appreciable difference in their playing styles. Frank Frost, in one of his final recording appearances, contributes keyboards on two tracks.

In addition to the aforementioned "Sail On," a number of blues standards are included on the album such as "How Many More Years" and "Mother's Gone."

On a whole, She Ain't None of Your'n is a slight improvement over 1998's You Better Keep Still, but the differences are fairly negligible. Those who enjoyed Ford's previous albums will like this one as well, but it is not likely to make many converts. ~Jeff Konkel

She Ain't None Of Your'n MP3
She Ain't None Of Your'n FLAC

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T-Model Ford - Bad Man

Size: 94.3 MB
Time: 41:12
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2002
Styles: Electric Blues, Delta Blues
Art: Full

01. Ask Her For Water (4:39)
02. Everything's Gonna Be Alright (4:24)
03. Yes, I'm Standing (4:40)
04. Bad Man (3:32)
05. Somebody's Knockin' (4:12)
06. Let The Church Roll On (3:01)
07. Black Nanny (4:41)
08. Backdoor Man (3:18)
09. The Duke (3:15)
10. Sallie Mae (5:27)

Personnel:
T-Model Ford: Guitars
Spam: Drums

You know you're in for the real deal when 78-year-old James "T-Model" Ford shouts out the low-down truth. After a quick and dirty drum roll on this (studio) live set, he announces: "I'm a tail-dragger from Greenville Mississippi. I'm the boss of the blues. Can't read, can''t write, and don''t been to school a day in my life!" Guitarist/vocalist Ford and his drummer Spam are the only musicians on this disc, aptly entitled Bad Man, but they sound like a five-piece band on a hot Saturday night. This is a recording you can't stop listening to, and yet its richness is masked in three, two, or one chord simplicity. It's what punk rock originally hoped (and ultimately failed) to deliver. Raw. Authentic. Relevant.

As with the three previous discs on the Fat Possum label, Ford uses an inimitable guitar style and interesting (or, as some purists may say, masculine) lyrics to express the rough and tumble of his unique, violent and varied existence. (Yes, he''s done some time the slammer.) But life sometimes has a funny way of redeeming itself — and lucky for us, T-Model Ford turned to the electric guitar, rather than a rut or a grave, at age 58. He has used his gifts to persevere through the past and the present. He truly is the Boss of the Blues.

It becomes quite obvious after hearing a few tracks on Bad Man that this is not a sonically polished outing. There are false starts, missed beats, volume and mix changes, etc. But there's the charm. The overproduced blues recordings of the '80s and the '90s provided a strong need to return to the coarseness of the genre, and this is where Fat Possum has led the call to bring it on home. (Ironically though, fellow label/soul mate RL Burnside was involved in one of the most over-produced discs in the catalogue — Come on In ).

Legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson (Big Star, the Replacements, Ry Cooder) is present on paper for Bad Man. But other than creative support, uncommon microphone placement, and a wall of grinding one-chord guitar overdubs on the title track for instance, Dickinson acts as a quiet guide behind the scenes of this recording. The sound is so hypnotic that if you close your eyes, you''d think Ford and Spam are in your living room, whooping it up for your personal blues indulgence. Check out the groove on ''Somebody's Knockin'' or the bluesy ''Everything's Gonna Be Alright''. There you have to listen carefully to figure out whether or not there''s bassist on this set too.

I really dug the feel of the hep gospel sounds on "Let the Church Roll On'' with its female chorus and Ford's guitar way over-phased. Elsewhere the endless 12 bar boogie of ''Yes, I'm Standing'', ''Black Nanny'', and ''The Duke'' could go all night long if it were not for the CD''s size limitations. Interestingly, the tunes come across so fully confident and personal that one forgets that there are no originals on the disc. For instance, ''Backdoor Man'', a great but worn-out blues staple, is given an intense workout from Ford's voice and electric guitar. That's the sign of one who's has lived the subject, yet has the guts to go beyond it.

Listening to Bad Man, you'll truly appreciate why Ford can say with assurance, ''Hell raiser / best guitar in town / I'm a Bad Man / all you wild women want me around!' ~Robert Jarovi

Bad Man MP3
Bad Man FLAC

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T-Model Ford & GravelRoad - Taledragger

Year: 2011
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 40:38
Size: 94,0 MB
Styles: Electric blues
Scans: Front, back

1. Same Old Train (7:05)
2. Comin' Back Home (3:43)
3. Someone's Knocking On My Door (5:13)
4. How Many More Years (5:40)
5. Big Legged Woman (7:56)
6. I Worn My Body For So Long (4:26)
7. Red Dress (3:17)
8. Little Red Rooster (3:14)

There is a compelling tension on T-Model Ford's Taledragger, with his rawer-than-gravel blues style that has always staggered between the styles of his native Mississippi Delta and those of Chicago. This doesn't mean the record is tense, but merely that its cultural lines blur consistently between the above styles as well as those of his sidemen - his backing band of the last few years, GravelRoad, is augmented by guest musicians from Detroit - who all came of age in the post-punk to indie rock eras.

Produced by Brian Olive, Matthew Smith, and Arthur Alexander in Glendale, CA, the set was mixed by Jim Diamond in Detroit. Suffice to say, the addition of baritone saxophone, Hammond B-3, and 12-string acoustic guitars to these extremely basic tunes makes for interesting listening. The set opens with "Same Old Train," a choogling shuffle that is "Mystery Train" with (some) different words. Ford's delightfully rough, front-charging guitar playing is supported by Stefan Zillioux's in-the-pocket pulse that bass and drums follow in sync, but Olive's upright piano is off the beat, following Ford; the entire tune ultimately slurs drunkenly. The lyrics refer to the record's muse: "a big legged mama" who appears often.

On "Someone's Knocking on My Door" (one of the album's many death meditations), Ford channels the spirits of his old friend Junior Kimbrough and Howlin' Wolf in a hypnotic two-chord shuffle. The band psychs it up with Smith playing a sinister, snaky B-3, augmented by jangling single-string guitar lines played between beats; there's a stinging lead break with enough echo to add a trippy dimension. The tension on this set reveals itself best in the readings of "How Many More Years" and "I Worn My Body for So Long." The former is swampy and disorienting, full of wah-wah guitars, stuttering drums, and a heavy echo on Ford's voice. He sings with an amused acceptance of the inevitable, not dread - though the accompaniment does its best to evoke it. This is true in the latter as well, with shimmering acoustic slide and fuzzed-out bass work by Smith.

"Big Legged Woman" is an all-out party rave-up with everything becoming an orgy of sound more befitting a Detroit barroom than a Delta juke joint - and does it ever work! What Ford, Olive, Smith, Alexander, and the rest have wrought on Taledragger is a modern blues album with primitive roots. The tension works. It's a far more interesting recording because of its "impurities" - paradoxically, making it a far more "authentic" blues record because it is linked to multiple historic traditions simultaneously. It's exponentially more enjoyable and exciting as blues than anything coming out of Chicago in the 21st century. /Thom Jurek, AllMusic

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T-Model Ford - You Better Keep Still

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:21
Size: 87.8 MB
Styles: Juke joint blues
Year: 1998
Art: Front

[3:34] 1. If I Had Wings (Part 1)
[3:15] 2. To The Left To The Right
[4:21] 3. Look What All You Got
[4:07] 4. Here Comes Papa
[3:07] 5. We Don't Understand
[2:55] 6. These Eyes
[4:22] 7. Pop Pop Pop (Remix)
[4:52] 8. The Old Number
[3:41] 9. Come Back Home
[4:02] 10. If I Had Wings (Part 2)

James Lewis Carter Ford (born Forest, Mississippi, 1924 - died Greenville, Mississippi, 16 July 2013) was an American ‘Mississippi Delta Blues’ musician better known by his stage name, T-Model Ford. Unable to remember his exact date of birth, he began his musical career in his early seventies, recording for the Fat Possum Records label.

His musical style melded traditional Chicago blues and juke joint blues styles with the rawness of Delta blues and a rebellious attitude. Also known as “The Taildragger”, Ford, in reference to his age, was known to tell studio musicians, “T-Model Ford is going to remember you sorry fuckers how it’s done.”

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T-Model Ford - Pee Wee Get My Gun

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 41:32
Size: 95.1 MB
Styles: Delta blues
Year: 1997/2012
Art: Front

[3:22] 1. Cut You Loose
[3:38] 2. T-Model Theme Song
[2:55] 3. Been A Long Time
[4:13] 4. Turkey And The Rabbit
[2:22] 5. Can't Be Touched
[3:13] 6. Nobody Gets Me Down
[2:44] 7. I'm Insane
[4:08] 8. Where You Been
[5:33] 9. Feels So Bad
[4:24] 10. Sugar Farm
[4:57] 11. Let Me In

Ford fits snugly into what has become the Fat Possum house sound: repetitive, raw electric guitar riffs, going off on one or two-chord vamps with stream-of-consciousness, improvised-sounding lyrics. The effect can be hypnotic or tedious, depending upon your taste. It's got more of a boogie, down-home feel that the usual Fat Possum release though, with Frank Frost adding keyboards to the usual guitar-drum duo combination on a couple of cuts. ~Richie Unterberger

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T-Model Ford - Jack Daniel Time

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 42:52
Size: 98.1 MB
Styles: Hill country blues, Juke joint blues
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[2:56] 1. I Love You, Babe (Acoustic)
[4:02] 2. Red's Houseparty
[3:36] 3. Jack Daniel Time
[3:12] 4. Big Boss Man
[2:15] 5. Rock Me Baby
[2:13] 6. That's Alright Mama
[4:57] 7. Hi-Heel Sneakers
[3:37] 8. Got A Woman
[5:23] 9. Mistreatin' Woman
[3:49] 10. Killing Floor
[6:47] 11. I Love You, Babe (Band)

JACK DANIEL TIME is an easygoing live album recorded at T-Model Ford's favorite local juke joint, Red's Lounge in Clarksdale, Mississippi, with harmonica player Terry Bean, drummer Lee Williams, and, sitting in on a few tracks, Ford's old bandmate Sam Carr. Mixing acoustic solo performances (a rarity for the electric slide master Ford) with full-band stompers, JACK DANIEL TIME sticks to blues favorites like "Killing Floor," "Hi-Heel Sneakers," and "That's Alright Mama," each performed with the passion of a man one-fourth of Ford's 80-plus years. ~Charity Stafford

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