A car accident, getting shot in the mouth, eight albums and years of touring pretty much sums up the life of blues superstar Frank “Son” Seals.

Right out of the womb, Seals was infested with blues. Before he took his first steps, he knew the blues. His father, Jim Seals, owned a blues club in Osceola, Ark. called the Dipsy Doodle, and Frank’s room was no more than a hallway away from the stage where the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, Albert King and Robert Nighthawk were only an earshot away every night.

But even though he was surrounded by outstanding blues talent every night, Seals’ father remained his greatest inspiration.

“My father taught me everything from the start,” Seals said in a press release.

“When I wanted to be riffing around all up and down the neck right away, he’d keep me on one chord for hours until I could feel it in my sleep. I’d get up the next morning, grab the guitar, and I’d be right on that chord,” said Seals.

By the time Seals reached the age of 18, he was already fronting his own band as a guitarist during the week and playing drums at the Dipsy Doodle on the weekends.

Tabbing some blues lingo, he was a true bluesman.

After a few road trips drumming for some blues artists, Seals found himself in Chicago in 1971 playing regular gigs at some of the city’s most prestigious blues clubs.

Nearly 30 years, six studio albums and two live records later, Seals has become one of the most recognized blues artists, playing all over the world with an assortment of other musicians including Sidney James Wingfield and Johnny B. Gayden.

In 1995, Seals’ career took a turn for the worse when an auto accident injured the middle finger of his left hand. The result: Two surgeries, four pins (later removed), rehabilitative therapy and a still-remaining screw.

Fortunately, the accident only slowed him down, and he was able to hit the road again and record the latter of his two live albums in 1996.

“When I listen to that record now, to me it’s amazing,” Seals told the Jazz Times. “To be able to do what I hear is a blessing, because the doctor told me they were going to have to go in and repair all this damage and they didn’t know how it was going to come out. That was a sad day for me.”

Though the accident was in the past, and he regained 95 percent use of his hand, more trouble was right around the corner.

On Jan. 5, 1997, Seals was awoken from his sleep with a burning pain in his mouth and splattered blood all over his pillow. His wife, convinced he was cheating on her, had shot him with a .22 caliber pistol.

She was arrested on five felony charges, and Seals is still carrying the bullet lodged in his jaw, serving as a distasteful reminder of how close to death he came.

“Where the bullet lodged is no problem, but it broke my jaw,” Seals said in a Hartford Advocate article. “I was really concerned about what would happen once I got to opening my mouth and hollering on stage. Was I going to experience any kind of difficulty? But remarkably, it didn’t happen. After that first night I knew what I could do.”

The event caused Seals to take a new outlook on life, and he began writing songs that spoke out against domestic violence.

“The whole experience put me more in touch with how precious life is,” Seals said.

Today, after years of performing, a major injury and a near death experience, the 56-year-old tours sparingly, mostly hitting up the Midwest.

With one of the most famous blues live shows ever, involving passion, grit and deep emotion, Seals can’t seem to be stopped.

Not even with a bullet to the mouth.