[Harp-L] T Model Ford R.I.P.

[Ross Macdonald <pdxharpdog@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Haven't seen too much about the passing of this great Hill Country bluesman on the "L", but I can tell you that the crazy stories about T Model are endless and most likely true.  

I had the pleasure of hanging out with him when we opened for one of his NW tour shows. We played a lightly amplified acoustic set in a smallish venue in Cottage Grove Oregon.  He was 90 +\- at the time and still mackin' on women 70 years his junior.  He sat 8 feet from me as we played our set and I got to hang with him a bit while his backing band got set up for his set.  He was gracious about our set, thought the resonator guitarist in our band was real good, all the while looking around at all, and I mean all of the women in the venue. 

If you ever met T Model you know that his smile even at 90 was enough to drive the women wild.  He was a real ladies man to the end.  

But the best and funniest part of the night for me was when he was finally onstage and began to tune his guitar. He tuned and tuned and tuned some more and was getting more and more out of tune with every turn of the pegs. Finally, after what was at least 10 minutes, he lifted the guitar up over his head as if to ask for some divine intervention and one of the backing musicians ran over and grabbed the guitar and quickly tuned it. 

T Model then played the living s**t out of that axe for the next 60 minutes. He was a great bluesman and absolutely one of a kind.  

He also was one of the subjects in the hill country blues documentary "You See Me Laughing" along with Cedell Davis, R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. It's a great piece of blues history.  If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch. 

Rest in Peace T Model. 

Ross Macdonald

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