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.
St. Louis Blues
Johnny Copeland Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I hate to see that evening sun go down
Cause my baby, he's gone left this town
Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
If I'm feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
I'll pack my truck and make my give-a-way
Pulls that man around by her, if it wasn't for her and her
That man I love would have gone nowhere, nowhere
I got the St. Louis blues, blues as I can be
That man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea
Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me
I love my baby like a school boy loves his pie
Like a Kentucky colonel loves his mint 'n rye
I love my man till the day I die
The lyrics of the song St. Louis Blues by Johnny Copeland express great heartache and despair. The first verse highlights the singer's reluctance to see the sun set on yet another day because it reminds him that his lover has left him. The repetition of the line "I hate to see that evening sun go down" emphasizes the sense of despair that the singer feels. He goes on to explain just how he feels about the situation in the second verse. He states that if he feels the same way he does now, tomorrow, he will pack up his truck and leave as well. There is no hope or optimism in these lyrics; they are tinged with nothing but sadness.
Line by Line Meaning
I hate to see that evening sun go down
I feel saddened by the sun setting because it reminds me of the absence of my loved one.
Cause my baby, he's gone left this town
My partner has abandoned me and our home, causing me great sadness and loneliness.
Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
I expect to feel the same pain and heartache tomorrow as I do today.
If I'm feelin' tomorrow like I feel today
Assuming my emotions do not improve, I will leave town to escape my heartache.
I'll pack my truck and make my give-a-way
I will prepare my vehicle and leave town to start anew elsewhere and escape painful memories.
St. Louis woman with her diamond ring
There is a woman in St. Louis who has a diamond ring, and she is influential over a man I care for deeply.
Pulls that man around by her, if it wasn't for her and her
It is the woman with the diamond ring who holds power over the man, and without her presence, he would not be swayed.
That man I love would have gone nowhere, nowhere
The man I care for would not be going anywhere if it wasn't for the St. Louis woman and her influence.
I got the St. Louis blues, blues as I can be
I am filled with intense sorrow and heartache due to the events happening to me in St. Louis.
That man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea
The man I love appears to have an impenetrable heart and is unable to feel love or affection.
Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me
If he were capable of love and attachment, he would never have abandoned me and gone so far away.
I love my baby like a school boy loves his pie
I care for my partner with a childlike infatuation, similar to how a young boy enjoys his favorite dessert.
Like a Kentucky colonel loves his mint 'n rye
My love for my partner is equivalent to the admiration a Kentucky colonel has for his favorite cocktail.
I love my man till the day I die
My love will never leave me, even after death, because my love for him is everlasting.
Lyrics © THE ROYALTY NETWORK INC.
Written by: W C HANDY
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind