Preview
T-MODEL FORD
Tuesday, May 18
Night Gallery
James "T-Model" Ford will make you dance. As a native of Mississippi, he is well versed in the century-old tradition of playing dance music called blues. The 80-years-old T-Model and Spam, his drummer, are well known for their ability to keep southern juke joints rockin’ into the wee hours. While T-Model isn’t a virtuoso on his given instrument, he nails a style of rural Mississippi that emphasizes hypnotic grooves and droning modalities. Modern electrical technologies allowed it to be amplified for nightclubs. Hell, T-Model and Spam make club DJs look like the pantywaists most of them are.
The amazing thing about Ford is how he started late in life. He didn’t pick up the guitar until his late 50s. Fat Possum records signed him in his 70s and made him a celebrity among college students with a rekindled interest in rural blues, thanks to his manifesto "I’m Insane" containing the telltale line "I’ll put my foot in your ass." If CBC Radio’s Michael Enright could get out of his self-absorbed slump, he would bring back his "Aging Dangerously" segment and make T-Model the permanent co-host.
When I asked T-Model why he started playing guitar, he proceeded to give a 20-minute answer covering the breakup with his last wife, the white woman jailbird who followed him around, and how he whooped Booba Barnes’s ass with his guitar licks. These are the highlights.
T-Model Ford: Well, my last wife left me. She bought me one. I wasn't mean to her, but she run off all the time. Every other week she's goin' back home, goin' back home. I think somethin' was wrong with her, though. I didn't worry about it…
I was gonna talk at her and say, "Let's go back together." I don't need it. No, I don't need that.
She said she gonna stay with me. I say, "OK". I didn't tell her to take the guitar back or sell it. That Friday I come in from work... I parked my car in the driveway. I seen this strange car, but I didn't know. I walk up in the house and my little children are runnin' and hollerin', "Daddy, daddy, daddy!"
My mother-in-law said, "Hey, James."
I say, "Mama."
She said, "James…."
"We got a telephone call to come get her."
I said, "OK." I sat there. She was sittin' on one end of the couch and I was sittin’ on the other end of the couch. Sat there a few minutes and I say, "You want some of this money I got in my pocket for you and the children?"
"I don't want nothin' you got."
I said, "OK. Thank you, darling." I didn't say no more to her. I sat there, me and her mama, talkin'.
She said, "James."
I say, "Yes, ma'am."
She said, "My other son-in-law, he got to go to work at 11 o'clock. We gonna get ready and go"…
I turned around in the yard and looked up. The sun was shinin' bright, like daylight. I said, "Well, Lord, I guess this is it. I ain't gonna go back and get her no more." So I didn't.
It was sort of cool that night so I went up into the house, struck a match and lit the heater. I sit down a few minutes and I looked back there at the guitar and the amp sittin' back there. I got up and went and got the little old guitar, brought it up, and took my knife and cut the pasteboard box around. I looked it over and looked at it and I couldn't read. I plugged it in the wall. I went to lookin' for the knobs and thangs. I found 'em. I turned it on. Didn't no lights come on or nothin'. I said to myself, "This thang ain't no good." I found a little ol' switch, hit it, and a light jumped on. I said, "Ahhhhhh-ahhhhhh-ahhhhh!" Lookin' there by myself.
Then I got up and went and got the guitar. Brought it back there. It was in the paid-for box it came in. I split it round and got it out. Opened the case. A pretty little guitar, a little old Gibson. I found a cord and I plugged it in. Put that thang and hit down on it. Ain't nothin' fadin' in. I turned up the button on the guitar. Ain't nothin' fadin' in. Turn another button on the guitar... shoot! I seen that switch there and hit that switch. I hit down on it and, "Boolla boomba," and it's "awwww-aahh-awww, I got you now!"
I kept on bumpin' on and bumpin' on it. I could sing, anyways. I was singin' one of Muddy Waters' records, "Wished I Had My Baby in My Right Arm". Ohhhh, I was gettin' down. Damn, and that ain't with a chord, I don't know what I done. So I just kept on. And I went to singin' a Howlin' Wolf song. I was soundin' good to me, anyway. I was just hittin' on it. I thought I was comin' up with it.
The next night, I come in from work and I got back on it, bangin' on it. I did a little bit, not too much. The next night, I got on it. There was café right there, close to the house. All the folks was over there and I was in the house playin' there by myself. Somebody bumped on my door. I said, "Come in!"
One of my old buddies, we work in the woods together. He come on in. "T-Model!"
"What"
"You can't play no guitar!"
I said, "I tell you what. I'm gonna mark the man that made it. Look over behind the bed and give me that gallon of moonshine." He looked there and he brought it to me.
I lay the guitar in front of my lap now and screwed that top off. I taste a little bit of it. Whooooooo, it tastes so good! The best moonshine I ever put in my mouth. I got me a good hit of it and I got back on that guitar. Looked like the thang just come to me. I'd work my fingers right, but I wasn't hittin' the right chords. I got me another drink of it. Man, when I knew it, I was playin' that guitar and singin' the blues. And from right then I been a bad man ever since! |
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