James Lewis Carter Ford, known to the blues world as T-Model Ford, did not start playing guitar until his fifth wife handed him one as a parting gift on her way out the door. He was in his 70s, illiterate, and carrying the scars of a life that included a severely abusive father, childhood labor in the fields and a sawmill, years as a lumber company foreman and truck driver, and a murder conviction that put him on a Mississippi chain gang. In this deep dive we follow how a man with no formal training and battered hands taught himself the instrument entirely by ear, mimicking Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf records and stomping his foot to build hypnotic, driving grooves.

We look at why even his birth year is a mystery, with his passport, his driver's license, census researchers and his own record label all pointing to different dates, and how  ...