Johnny Copeland - Further On Up The Road
Johnny Clyde Copeland was born in 1937 in Haynesville, Louisiana; he enjoyed artists like B.B. King and Sonny Boy Williamson as a youth, but it wasn´t until after he and his mother moved to Houston in 1950 that he became actively involved in music. At 18 he was gigging around town in a band called The Dukes of Rhythm. At Shady´s Playhouse, owned by legendary Houston blues entrepreneur Big Frank Newsome, Copeland and his cohorts found a musical home as well as an opportunity to hone their craft.
Shady´s was more than a gig; it was also a school. The cream of the southern and southwestern blues and R&B circuits played there regularly. Copeland bathed himself in T-Bone Walker´s eloquent melodies and harmonic imagination; he reveled in the hard-driving emotionalism of Junior Parker, while his sense of showmanship was encouraged by the earthy flamboyance of artists like Big Mama Thornton.
The late ´60s and early ´70s were strange, uncertain times for a musician of Copeland´s artistic bent and integrity. Despite his excursions into soul music his heart had always been with the blues, and he was oath to further modify his music to fit mercurial public or commercial dictates.
Copeland´s musical vision is one of the most unique in modern blues. Even his early song titles give a glimpse of what he´s all about: a heart-wrenching sense of pleading urgency, combined with an unabashed desire to convey uplift and optimism. Copeland can get down and party with the best of them, but he´s also committed to going one step further and making his music a positive force. His blues are intense and deep. He refuses to compromise dignity - his own, his music´s, his audience´s, that of the women in his songs - for the sake of cheap thrills or machismo.
CD Info
CD
01. Further on up the road
02. That´s all right
03. Cut off my right arm
04. Excuses, Excuses
05. Wella wella baby
06. Love her with a feeling
07. Look on yonder wall
08. Ain´t nobody´s business
09. Nobody but you
10. Learned my lesson
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