Daddy's girl

Shemekia Copeland carries on her father's blues

by Mark Edmonds

On the morning I've chosen to write about Shemekia Copeland -- the late blues singer/guitarist Johnny Copeland's daughter -- I'm haunted by the bittersweet memory of the last time I saw the pair together. A year ago, both Copelands were in Northampton for an Iron Horse gig. Johnny's heart was failing: 12 months before, doctors had set him up with an experimental device that kept him alive, but he was still too weak to endure a 60-minute set. So he'd pressed his daughter into service as an opener. Watching her work was something to marvel at. As she growled and hollered in front of her dad's band, it was hard to believe she was just a 17-year-old kid. On the sidelines, Johnny watched and beamed. "She's gonna be real big someday," he predicted in a whisper to me. "After I'm gone, it'll happen. You'll see."

Shemekia's still-developing style is borne out of the same equal-parts of soul and spirituality that's helped make other women such as Irma Thomas, Aretha, and Ann Peebles roots-music legends in their own time. When she arrives in Providence to play the Call this Saturday, Copeland will showcase her own variation on that heady potion. You can experience it there and again on May 5 when her debut CD, Turn the Heat Up, surfaces on Chicago's Alligator label.

Live, like her daddy, Copeland's doubly capable of making your fillings vibrate and caressing your ears. And she's just as versatile in the studio, as her disc illustrates. On 12 tracks, she works through a series of songs that runs the gamut from sugary soul-tinged ballads to gospel-styled raves. Many often spark subtle comparisons in your mind to classics from the golden eras of soul, blues, and gospel. The disc's title track, for instance, is eerily reminiscent of some of Peebles's best work at Memphis's Hi label during the label's glory days in the late '60s, thanks to an arrangement built of similar roller-coaster horn lines, organ swirls, and sharp guitar fills.

Copeland's a singer with incredible pipes. And she knows how to use 'em. On some tracks, she flat-out growls, while on others, she can throttle back to sing a ballad that's as softly elegant as anything the queen of soul has ever waxed. And sassy too. On "Always Get My Man," she brags "I got a better tracking system than the FBI" in a way that's not only a boast but a statement. In all, a remarkable debut.

Surprisingly, it's also one that the artist herself still can't believe she recorded. "Everything just happened so fast this past year, I still think it's all a dream," Copeland admits over the phone from her New Jersey home. "I'm not going to believe all this has happened until the CD actually comes out, and I can see it in the store. And even then, I probably won't believe it."

Born and raised in New York, the soon-to-be 19-year-old singer's first gig came, at 12, when she joined her father on stage for a few quick songs at a New York City club. The practice continued whenever Johnny played locally. In time, she graduated to fronting her own band, often gigging in many of the same clubs her father played.

At one, last spring, Alligator president Bruce Iglauer happened in. "He said he liked what I was doing, and I thought he was putting me on," she recalls. "But a couple weeks later, he called and offered studio time."

She eventually recorded tracks for Turn the Heat Up with sidemen who include San Francisco's Joe Lois Walker, Chicago's Michael Hill, and Boston's Monster Mike Welch. She'll be quitting her day job soon to start her first tour. She says she knows what she's getting into. Before his death last summer, her father taught her how to survive in the music business.

"He taught me everything because he always thought I was going to do this. From the day I was born, Daddy ran around telling everyone I was a singer. Everybody thought he was crazy, but here I am."

She knows there are many more lessons to learn. And she knows she's not going to learn them alone. "As I start out with this, I know he's up there watching over me. You know, I used to be able to sneak around behind his back a little," she says with a giggle. "But I won't be able to get away with anything now." n

Shemekia Copeland plays at 9:30 p.m. on March 14 at the Call, in Providence. Call (401) 751-2255.