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.