Frank Morey has a tattoo of a horseshoe on his right forearm with the word "soul" emblazoned across it. "My grandfather had the same tattoo," the singer-songwriter explains, "but his had the word ‘luck.’ I figured I didn’t need the luck."

Maybe he figured right. Listen to the story of how he got his record deal: "I was on a tour that I booked going down the length of Route 66 with my drummer, Scott Pittman. We were in Flagstaff, Arizona, and running out of money, so we stopped at this hotel, the Monte Vista, where we heard they did punk shows. We figured we could maybe get a show there. They didn’t have music on Tuesday nights, but they had a PA, and they said that if we wanted to play, they’d give us a room and use of the laundry. Bob Koester, who owns Delmark Records, was on vacation with his wife, and they happened to be in the hotel that night." And that’s how Morey, a musical rapscallion from Lowell with a little bit of Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and Jack Kerouac in his blood, got signed to one of the country’s most durable jazz and blues labels, which recently released his The Delmark Sessions.

Until the album came out this past fall, Morey had mostly been playing one-night-stands for pass-the-hat-money at bars in Lowell, Worcester, and New York City, with occasional gigs at rock clubs like T.T. the Bear’s Place and all-ages punk shows. "The first one of those we played was in Santa Fe," he recalls. "It was at a youth center, and the booking guy was like, ‘This is a punk club, you understand.’ I said, ‘I think we’ll do fine.’ We needed the gig. We were low on money. Afterwards, we had girls coming up telling us, ‘You know, our father would love this.’ So I like to think we’re connecting parents and their children."

These days he’s graduated to the occasional tour and a pair of local residencies, on Tuesday nights at Zuzu in Cambridge’s Central Square and on Sundays at the Independent in Somerville’s Union Square. And Wednesdays, Morey’s trio can be found dishing out their songs — which to borrow a phrase from the record producer Jim Dickinson sound like a drunken circus parade stumbling down the road — at Vincent’s in Worcester.

On the first Tuesday of his Zuzu residency, Morey was seated just past the restaurant’s door, growling into a microphone and banging a battered Harmony electric guitar he’d plugged into an old high-school classroom PA to produce tones as scratchy and meat-raw as the ones that tumble from his throat. With Pittman playing an ancient trap kit by his side and bassist Joe Faria slapping the strings of his upright, they made music as shambling and occasionally poignant as that of The Delmark Sessions. The tunes ranged from classics like ".44 Blues," a huff-and-puff growler Morey must have nicked from Howlin’ Wolf’s version, to originals like "Luci," a song about a "devil-woman" trying to drag Morey to metaphorical hell. He pulled plenty of humor from under his crushed Ed Norton — the Honeymooners sewer worker, not the actor — hat in "Goin’ Down Kickin’," a song about resisting death and decline with the beautiful line "I’m gonna step on everybody on my way down."

"I’ve never had a young man’s musical tastes," he replies when asked where his whiskey-stinking Delta-to-Dustbowl sound comes from. "I was 20 years old and went through my dad’s record collection and found Howlin’ Wolf, and on it went from there. I love old acoustic country blues and some of the acoustic Chicago stuff. And jazz. When I say jazz, I mean like the 1930s Louis Armstrong pop stuff."

That’s a style more evident on his self-released debut, Father John’s Medicine, which is available at his gigs and from www.frankmorey.com. But his biggest jones is for the music of Ray Charles. "He’s the closest to both blues and jazz for me, and maybe rock and roll, I relate to him best. I have this kind of imaginary relationship with Ray Charles. I kind of talk to him, and if Ray Charles thinks a song is all right, then I know it’s all right. Of course, since it’s all in my mind, he never tells me anything I don’t want to hear."

Frank Morey’s trio play Zuzu, 474 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Call (617) 864-3278. They play the Independent, 75 Union Square, on Sundays at 8 p.m. Call (617) 440-6021. And they’re at Vincent’s, 49 Suffolk Street in Worcester, on Wednesday nights. Call (508) 752-9439.