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 father's 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 Shady's Playhouse — Houston's leading blues club, host to most of the city's 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 Shady's 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 Dylan's "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', Ain't 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 don't 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 "Life's 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-TV's 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.
Baby Please Don't Go
Johnny Copeland Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go, down to New Orleans
You know I love you so
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
I get you way'd out here, and let you walk alone
Turn your lamp down low
Turn your lamp down low
Turn your lamp down low
I beg you all night long, baby, please don't go
You brought me way down here
You brought me way down here
You brought me way down here
'bout to Rolling Forks, you treat me like a dog
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go, back the New Orleans
I beg you all night long
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
I get you way'd out here, and let you walk alone
You know your man down gone
You know your man down gone
You know your man down gone
To the country farm, with all the shackles on
In Johnny Copeland's song "Baby Please Don't Go," the singer is pleading with his lover, asking her not to leave him and go to New Orleans. Despite treating him poorly and bringing him down to Rolling Forks, he begs all night for her to stay. He claims he would rather let her go than be her "dog," which could mean he is asserting his independence and not allowing himself to be mistreated or controlled. The singer also references turning the lamp down low, which could signify a desire for intimacy or a private moment between the two of them.
The repetition of "baby, please don't go" throughout the song adds to the desperation and urgency of the singer's plea. By the end of the song, the singer is resigned to the fact that his lover is leaving and he will soon be taken away to a country farm with shackles on. This final line could be a metaphor for feeling trapped or helpless in a situation where he has no say or control.
Line by Line Meaning
Baby, please don't go
The singer is pleading with their lover not to leave them
Baby, please don't go, down to New Orleans
The singer is begging their lover not to go to New Orleans, as if they do, the singer will lose them forever
You know I love you so
The singer is affirming their love for their lover
Before I be your dog
The artist would rather be left alone than be treated like a dog by their lover
I get you way'd out here, and let you walk alone
The artist would rather their lover be far away from them than to treat them poorly
Turn your lamp down low
The singer is requesting some privacy or intimacy with their lover
I beg you all night long, baby, please don't go
The singer is begging their lover not to leave them all night long
You brought me way down here
The artist is unhappy with their current situation, presumably location
'bout to Rolling Forks, you treat me like a dog
The artist is upset with how their lover is treating them on a trip to Rolling Forks
Baby, please don't go, back the New Orleans
The artist is again pleading with their lover not to go back to New Orleans
You know your man down gone
The singer is warning their lover that if they leave, they will be without them
To the country farm, with all the shackles on
The artist is implying that if their lover leaves, they will end up in a difficult or oppressive situation
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: PHILIP PARRIS LYNOTT
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Magda Sanchez
Great music!
Filopimin Kasselouris