The acclaimed blues singer and guitarist T-Model Ford has died at home in Greenville, Mississippi.

Ford, whose real name was James Lewis Carter, was battling a respiratory illness. His age is unknown due to a lack of proper records, but he was thought to be between 89 and 94 years old.

A late starter in music, Ford taught himself guitar aged 58 when his fifth wife gave him one on the night she left him. During his long and eventful life he was married six times and supposedly sired 26 children; he was also shot, poisoned, stabbed and served two years on a chain gang for killing a man in a bar fight.

One of the last authentic Mississippi blues men, Ford was eventually spotted by Fat Possum label boss Matthew Johnson, who put out his debut album Pee-Wee Get My Gun in 1997. He went on to release another six albums, ending with 2011’s Taledragger on Alive Naturalsound Records, and performed at the Jim Jarmusch-curated ATP festival in New York in 2010.

NPR are currently hosting session recorded by Ford for Chicago radio station KEXP back in 2008, with the bluesman yelling, “Jack Daniel time!” at intervals throughout – listen here.