外文名：Johnny Copeland 国籍：美国 出生地：路易斯安那州海恩斯维尔 职业：吉他手、歌手 生日：1937 年 3 月 27 日 简介：by Richard Skelly & Bruce Eder Considering the amount of time he spent steadily rolling from gig to gig, Johnny Clyde Copelands rise to prominence in the blues world in the early 90s wasnt all that surprising. A contract with the PolyGram/Verve label put his 90s recordings into the hands of thousands of blues lovers around the world. Its not that Copelands talent changed all that much since he recorded for Rounder Records in the 1980s; its just that major companies began to see the potential of great, hardworking blues musicians like Copeland. Unfortunately, Copeland was forced to slow down in 1995-96 by heart-related complications, yet he continued to perform shows until his death in July of 1997. Johnny Copeland was born March 27, 1937, in Haynesville, LA, about 15 miles south of Magnolia, AR (formerly Texarkana, a hotbed of blues activity in the 1920s and 30s). The son of sharecroppers, his father died when he was very young, but Copeland was given his fathers guitar. His first gig was with his friend Joe Guitar Hughes. Soon after, Hughes took sick for a week and the young Copeland discovered he could be a front man and deliver vocals as well as anyone else around Houston at that time. His music, by his own reasoning, fell somewhere between the funky R&B of New Orleans and the swing and jump blues of Kansas City. After his family (sans his father) moved to Houston, Copeland was exposed, as a teen, to musicians from both cities. While he was becoming interested in music, he also pursued boxing, mostly as an avocation, and it is from his days as a boxer that he got his nickname Clyde. Copeland and Hughes fell under the spell of T-Bone Walker, whom Copeland first saw perform when he was 13 years old. As a teenager he played at locales such as Shadys Playhouse — Houstons leading blues club, host to most of the citys best bluesmen during the 1950s — and the Eldorado Ballroom. Copeland and Hughes subsequently formed The Dukes of Rhythm, which became the house band at the Shadys Playhouse. After that, he spent time playing on tour with Albert Collins (himself a fellow T-Bone Walker devotee) during the 1950s, and also played on stage with Sonny Boy Williamson II, Big Mama Thornton, and Freddie King. He began recording in 1958 with Rock n Roll Lily for Mercury, and moved between various labels during the 1960s, including All Boy and Golden Eagle in Houston, where he had regional successes with Please Let Me Know and Down on Bending Knees, and later for Wand and Atlantic in New York. In 1965, he displayed a surprising prescience in terms of the pop market by cutting a version of Bob Dylans Blowin in the Wind for Wand. After touring around the Texas triangle of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, he relocated to New York City in 1974, at the height of the disco boom. It seems moving to New York City was the best career move Copeland ever made, for he had easy access to clubs in Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Boston, all of which still had a place for blues musicians like him. Meanwhile, back in Houston, the club scene was hurting, owing partly to the oil-related recession of the mid-70s. Copeland took a day job at a Brew n Burger restaurant in New York and played his blues at night, finding receptive audiences at clubs in Harlem and Greenwich Village. Copeland recorded seven albums for Rounder Records, beginning in 1981 and including Copeland Special, Make My Home Where I Hang My Hat, Texas Twister, Bringing It All Back Home, When the Rain Starts a Fallin, Aint Nothing But a Party (live, nominated for a Grammy) and Boom Boom; he also won a Grammy award in 1986 for his efforts on an Alligator album, Showdown! with Robert Cray and the late Albert Collins. Although Copeland had a booming, shouting voice and was a powerful guitarist and live performer, what most people dont realize is just how clever a songwriter he was. His latter-day releases for the PolyGram/Verve/Gitanes label, including Flyin High (1992) and Catch Up with the Blues, provide ample evidence of this on Lifes Rainbow (Nature Song) (from the latter album) and Circumstances (from the former album). Because Copeland was only six months old when his parents split up and he only saw his father a few times before he passed away, Copeland never realized he had inherited a congenital heart defect from his father. He disovered this in the midst of another typically hectic tour in late 1994, when he had to go into the hospital in Colorado. After he was diagnosed with heart disease, he spent the next few years in and out of hospitals, undertaking a number of costly heart surgeries. Early in 1997, he was waiting for a heart transplant at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. As he was waiting, he was put on the L-VAD, a recent innovation for patients suffering from congenital heart defects. In 1995, Copeland appeared on CNN and ABC-TVs Good Morning America, wearing his L-VAD, offering the invention valuable publicity. Despite his health problems, Copeland continued to perform and his always spirited concerts did not diminished all that much. After living 20 months on the L-VAD — the longest anyone had lived on the device — he received a heart transplant on January 1, 1997 and for a few months, the heart worked fine and he continued to tour. However, the heart developed a defective valve, necessitating heart surgery in the summer. Copeland died of complications during heart surgery on July 3, 1997. 从艺历程：科普兰出生于路易斯安那州海恩斯维尔。受T-Bone Walker的影响，他在德克萨斯州休斯顿组建了 Dukes of Rhythm 乐队，并于 1956 年首次录制唱片，次年与Duke Records签约。虽然他的早期唱片在商业上没有取得多大成功，但在接下来的二十年里，他成为了一名受欢迎的巡回演出歌手。 他早期的录音生涯涵盖了布鲁斯、灵魂乐和摇滚乐。他为 Mercury、Golden Eagle 和 All Boy 等唱片公司录制过单曲。 他的第一首单曲是“Rock 'n' Roll Lily”，后来他又录制了“Down on Bending Knees”和“Please Let Me Know”等成功歌曲。在他的大部分单曲中，科普兰更像是歌手而不是吉他手。 在迪斯科的驱使下，他重新考虑了自己的未来，于 1976 年移居纽约，并在东部城市广泛演出。在纽约，他遇到了一位名叫丹·道尔的年轻唱片制作人，道尔在帮助科普兰与Rounder 唱片公司签约方面发挥了重要作用。道尔制作了科普兰最初为 Rounder 发行的专辑，包括《Copeland Special》，他凭借该专辑于 1981 年荣获WC Handy 奖，和 《Bringin' It All Back Home 》（1985 年）。科普兰还与艾伯特·柯林斯和罗伯特·克雷一起录制唱片，并凭借专辑《Showdown!》荣获1987 年格莱美最佳传统布鲁斯专辑奖。 科普兰巡演范围广泛，参加了 1983 年的长滩蓝调音乐节和 1988 年的旧金山蓝调音乐节。科普兰还作为嘉宾参加了 1985 年的蒙特勒爵士音乐节，与史蒂维·雷·沃恩和他的乐队Double Trouble一起演出。沃恩和科普兰在沃恩的合辑《日出蓝调》中一起演唱了鲍勃·格丁斯的歌曲“Tin Pan Alley” 。同年晚些时候，他还参加了第一届 BRBF（Blues Peer Festival）。 晚年，他因先天性心脏缺陷而身体状况不佳。他在纽约市哥伦比亚长老会医疗中心去世，享年 60 岁，原因是六个月前接受心脏移植手术后出现并发症。 科普兰是新泽西州蒂内克市的居民。他的女儿谢米基亚·科普兰是一名成功的歌手。他还留下了妻子、儿子和两个女儿。 2017 年，科普兰被追授入蓝调名人堂。