Robben Ford was born in Woodlake, California, on December 16, 1951, and grew up in Ukiah, in the northern part of the state. He started on saxophone at ten and picked up the guitar at fourteen. His father, Charles Ford, sang and played country guitar, and the band Robben formed with his brothers Patrick (drums) and Mark (harmonica) was named for him: the Charles Ford Blues Band. His first blues models were Mike Bloomfield and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and he listened closely to B.B. King. At about eighteen his band was hired to back the harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite in San Francisco, and the Charles Ford Band, re-formed in 1971, made an album for Arhoolie in early 1972.

In 1972 he joined the road band of the blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon, a job that lasted into 1973. The two recorded the albums Live and Spoonful, and a set from the 1972 Monterey Jazz Festival with Witherspoon was not issued until 2008. In 1974 he replaced Larry Carlton as the guitarist in the L.A. Express, the group of Los Angeles studio players led by saxophonist Tom Scott. The band was backing Joni Mitchell on her Court and Spark tour, and Ford is the guitarist on the live double album Miles of Aisles, recorded at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on August 14 to 17, 1974. He also plays on three tracks of her next studio album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975): electric guitar on "In France They Kiss on Main Street," dobro on "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" and guitar on "Harry's House / Centerpiece." The L.A. Express recorded with George Harrison at his Friar Park home, and Ford and Scott played in Harrison's band on his late-1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar. Ford has called his two years with Mitchell and the band the most formative of his musical life. He left the group in 1976, after Tom Cat (1975).

His own records began with Schizophonic (1976, LAX) and, with Witherspoon, a live album on the same label. Elektra approached him in 1977, and The Inside Story (1979), produced by Steve Cropper, was made with Russell Ferrante on keyboards, Jimmy Haslip on bass and Ricky Lawson on drums. That rhythm section became the Yellowjackets, signed to Warner Bros. by the producer Tommy LiPuma. The group's first album came out in June 1981 with Ford on guitar, and the Montreux Jazz Festival database lists him on stage on July 14, 1981 with the Yellowjackets, with Randy Crawford and the Yellowjackets, and with David Sanborn. He stayed through the second album, Mirage a Trois (1983), which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Fusion Performance although Ford played on only half of it.

In 1986 the next call came from Miles Davis. After Mike Stern left the band in March, LiPuma recommended Ford to Davis, who phoned him himself. Ford was in the band from April to September 1986, and the July 17, 1986 concert at the Casino in Montreux is documented on the 2002 box set The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 1973-1991. He then returned to his own recording career. He also worked with Sadao Watanabe in 1985 and again in 1987, and in 1989 he was in the cast of the house band for NBC's late-night show Sunday Night alongside Philippe Saisse, Marcus Miller and J.T. Lewis. Talk to Your Daughter (Warner Bros., 1988), on which he sang lead, produced and played with Roscoe Beck, Vinnie Colaiuta, Jeff Porcaro and Russell Ferrante, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Recording, and its version of Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" was used in the Clint Eastwood film Pink Cadillac. Minor Elegance (MGI, 1989) paired him with the jazz guitarist Joe Diorio.

In 1992 he returned to the blues with a working band, the Blue Line, with bassist Roscoe Beck and drummer Tom Brechtlein. Robben Ford & the Blue Line (Stretch, 1992) lists Chick Corea as an executive producer. It was nominated for a Grammy and won a W.C. Handy Award, and Mystic Mile (1993) was nominated as well. Handful of Blues (Blue Thumb, 1995) followed, then the instrumental Tiger Walk (Blue Thumb, 1997), whose opening track, "In the Beginning," was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Supernatural (1999), produced by Susan Rogers, brought in string arrangements by Roger Kellaway, Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Michael McDonald on backing vocals. Signed to Concord in 2002, he made Blue Moon (2002), Keep On Running (2003) and Truth (2007), a nominee for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 50th Grammy Awards, and he was the special guest on Larry Carlton's Live in Tokyo (2007). Grammy.com lists five nominations and no wins.

Since 2013 he has recorded for Provogue and earMUSIC. Bringing It Back Home (2013) and Into the Sun (2015, produced by Niko Bolas, with Warren Haynes, ZZ Ward and Keb' Mo' as guests) are separated by A Day in Nashville (2014), cut in a single day in the studio with an invited audience. Purple House (2018) was co-produced with Casey Wasner. After touring Japan together, Ford and the saxophonist Bill Evans recorded The Sun Room (2019) with the bassist James Genus and the drummer Keith Carlock, and they followed it with Common Ground, first released in 2020 and issued by earMUSIC in 2022, with Carlock and Darryl Jones, the bassist in the Rolling Stones' touring band. Pure (2021) is his first all-instrumental album since Tiger Walk, and Night in the City (2023) is a live set recorded at Nashville's City Winery with a quintet that includes the saxophonist Jeff Coffin. In October 2022 he opened for Eric Clapton in Italy. Ford now lives in London, where with his partner Milam Kelly Roberts he started the Robben Ford Guitar Dojo, a teaching project. His newest studio album, Two Shades of Blue, was released on April 17, 2026 on Provogue and was recorded with bands in the United States and in London. At 74 he continues to record.

Ford plays blues with jazz harmony and phrasing, and plays jazz with a blues singer's sense of space. AllMusic's Scott Yanow describes a body of work that spans and combines blues and rock, jazz and funk, and Ford himself says he has never made two records that sound alike. The blues side is plain on the page: a long run of blues records on Stretch, Blue Thumb, Concord and Provogue, early training with Musselwhite and Witherspoon, and a signature tone built around Dumble amplifiers. The rock side is just as documented, from the Kiss album Creatures of the Night (1982) to guitar on two tracks of Bob Dylan's Under the Red Sky (1990) to one of the guitarists asked to try a solo on Steely Dan's "Peg" in 1977. What places him in jazz is the other side of his career: a spell as a sideman with the L.A. Express and Joni Mitchell, six years in the Yellowjackets, a Montreux concert in the band of Miles Davis, a co-led record with Joe Diorio, and a 1988 session with Charlie Haden and Ralph Towner that sat unreleased until 2005. He has named Roger Kellaway and Tom Scott as major influences on his musical development, and he credits Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield for the blues. Musician magazine ranked him among the 100 greatest guitarists of the 20th century.