Johnny Copeland - Further On Up the Road aka Live in Australia (1990)

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The Texas Bluesman in the bush

Johnny Copeland, known as The Texas Bluesman, actually lived in the Lone Star State less than half of his life. If his name is well known from blues aficionados, his life is probably less familiar to many of them. So here is a little reminder.

Born in Haynesville, in the north of Louisiana, in 1937, the son of sharecroppers who divorced six months after his birth, he then moved with his mother across the state line some 30 km north to Magnolia, Arkansas, where he grew up. The family relocated to Houston when he was 13, and he started to discover blues through musicians like Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lowell Fulson, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and above all T-Bone Walker who became his inspiring model.

In Houston, he soon met Joe "Guitar" Hughes who became his life-long friend and guitar "teacher". Both formed the band Dukes of Rhythm, which became quite popular locally. In 1958, Copeland started to record singles for small local labels during the next decade, also working as a tour sideman for R'n'B and Soul artists such as Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd.

But the growing wave of disco caused an important loss of popularity for blues music in the Houston area, and in 1975 Copeland decided to move to the Harlem district of New York City. His career really took off when he signed a recording deal with Rounder Records in 1981, and the release of his first album "Copeland Special" the same year earned him a W. C. Handy Award. From then on, he didn't stop recording and touring. In 1985, he teamed up with Albert Collins and the young Robert Cray for the famous album "Showdown !" which received a double Handy and Grammy award.

In West Africa with local musicians

Copeland also became interested in African music. In 1984, on a successful 10-country tour of Western Africa sponsored by The State Department, Copeland was so fascinated by the African performers he met that he returned to Ivory Coast the following year and recorded the album "Bringing It All Back Home," a brilliant blend of African rhythms and American blues, an experience that he renewed on his final recording "Jungle Swing" in 1995.

Unfortunately Copeland had not only inherited a guitar from his father, but also a congenital heart disease that was diagnosed after he suffered several heart attacks in the mid-1990s.

Despite eight open-heart surgical interventions, he went back on touring and recorded several albums for the Verve label. After being equipped with an experimental cardiac helping device in 1995, he finally underwent a heart transplant in January 1997. Four months later, this incredible man was back on stage in a comeback show in New York and one month later at the W.C. Handy Awards in Memphis. But in late June he had to undergo a new surgery to repair the leak diagnosed on the donor's heart. But he didn't survive post-surgery complications and died on the third of July 1997, at the age of 60.

"Further On Up the Road" aka "Live in Australia" was recorded seven years earlier, during his June-July 1990 Australian tour. Johnny and his band appear in great shape and offer a burning and catchy show. This album is all the more interesting that it's Copeland only live recording, unveiling the outstanding energy expended by a great showman delivering powerful gravelly vocals and cutting guitar parts.

Some tracks are particularly exciting : the slow blues "That's All Right", the excellent "Cut Off My Right Arm" enlightened by Copeland's hot lead guitar, the swinging "Excuses, Excuses", the vocally outstanding "Wella Wella Baby", the fast-moving "Learned My Lesson"… In fact the whole album is an appealing moment of energetic and soulful Texas blues by... a New York man. ■

Interview
→ Part I : https://youtu.be/ry4kXUerJrA
→ Part II : https://youtu.be/0qGpaTSU2SA

Live videos
● The Lone Star Cafe, NYC, 1991 : https://youtu.be/bQZ11S4kOtU
● "Make My Home Where I Hang My Hat" with trumpet player Calvin Owen's band, Banana Peel Club (Holland), 1990 : https://youtu.be/Xku7BV3oWlU
● Blues Festival, Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain), 1989 : https://youtu.be/2fWIXfw-9m4
● San Antonio, 1988 : https://youtu.be/qpxWVJX7qHo
● Valencia (Spain), 1987 : https://youtu.be/9ELS3IFnlzo
● Stevie Ray Vaughan & Johnny Copeland, Montreux Festival, 1985 :
→ "Pride and joy", "Mary had a little lamb" & "Cold shot" : https://youtu.be/fjDFRt9oRg8
→ "Tin pan alley" : https://youtu.be/9VxpRnhlyN8
→ "Look at little sister" (00 :00 to 9:00, followed by "Voodoo chile (slight return), without Copeland)" : https://youtu.be/DENKFD-3cRA

● "Everybody Wants A Piece Of Me", Montreux Festival, 1983 : https://youtu.be/eIgyzQCqL40
[Johnny Copeland - Guitar & Vocals, Ben Bierman – Trumpet, Bert McGowan – Sax, Ken Vangel – Piano, Brian Miller – Bass, James Wormworth - Drums]
● With Steve Mose, 1980s : https://youtu.be/7grc3yxliNw
● With the German band Passport and Klaus Doldinger, Germany : https://youtu.be/sJeCFd125pQ
● "Honky Tonkin'" : https://youtu.be/o1R4ls73dxU

● Shemekia Copeland (Johnny's blues singer daughter) : "Ghetto Child", Annual Rawa Blues Festival, Katowice (Poland), 2016 : https://youtu.be/gAedo8fcIWY

In the early 1970s in Houston

With daughter Shemekia