T-Model Ford - The Ladies Man

  by Mark Rowland

published: 7 / 3 / 2010

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T Model Ford was in his 70s before he started playing music. Now around 90 years old (T-Model is unsure about exactly what year he was born), he has just released his seventh album, ‘The Ladies Man’. The sound is classic blues, sparsely arranged, with Ford’s timeworn voice and guitar driving the tunes. It was all recorded in one long, live session in 2008, with Ford playing as many songs as he could remember, and additional musicians joining in with him sporadically. As a result, many of the songs are fairly long, with Ford clearly getting into the vibe of every song. As a result, ‘The Ladies Man’ feels like you’re eavesdropping on the old man as he sits on his front porch and plays for the sheer pleasure of it. This is the true blues; rough and raw and from the soul. Slow numbers like ‘Two Trains’ and ‘I Love You Baby’ are counterbalanced by the driving ’44 Blues’ and ‘My Babe’, although, for the most part, this is an album of slow, reflective numbers, each with plenty of lyrical bite and wit. The songs are broken up by snippets of conversation between Ford and other people in the studio, emphasising the fact that this is much a snapshot of a specific moment in time. The guitar playing is full of random slips and mistakes, and the songs are loose in structure. This is playing for the pure pleasure of it, and it’s hard not to get swept up in it. The album closes with the stonking ‘Hip Shaking Woman’, a 10-minute shuffle that never drags or dips, despite the fact that Ford jams it out considerably. Ford is sounding surprisingly sprightly for a man of his age, proving that music isn’t just a game that youth can play.

Track Listing:-

1 Chickenhead Man
2 Two Trains
3 I'm Coming To Kick Your Asses
4 I Love You Babe
5 44 Blues
6 Salli Mae
7 My Babe
8 I Was Born In A Swamp
9 That's All Right
10 Love Me All Night Long
11 Hip Shaking Woman

Label Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/AliveNaturalsoundRecords
http://www.alive-records.com/
https://twitter.com/AliveRecords
https://instagram.com/alivenaturalsound/
https://www.youtube.com/user/JIMalive1

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