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.
Tin Pan Alley
Johnny Copeland Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
See what was goin' on
Things was too hot down there
Couldn't stay very long
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Alley's the roughest place I've ever been
All the peoples down there
She get up in the mornin'
Before the break a day
Before she can wash her face and hand
You know she really did go away
Hey, hey, hey, you tell
What kinda place can this here Alley be?
Well now, every women I get here
Every women I get to know
This Alley takes her away from me
I heard a pistol shoot
Yeah, and it was a .44
Somebody killed a crap shooter
'Cause he didn't shake, rattle and roll
Hey, hey, hey, hey
What kinda place can a Alley be?
All those people down there
Lord, they are livin' for their whisky, wine and gin
I heard a woman scream
Yeah, and I peeked through the door
Some cat was workin' on Annie with a
Lord, Lord with a two by four
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Alley's the roughest place, I've ever been
All the people down there
Lord, they are killin' for their whisky, wine and gin
I saw a cop standing there
With hand on his gun
Said this is a raid boy now
Run, run, nobody run
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Alley's the roughest place, I've ever been
Yeah, they took me away from Alley
Lord, they took me right back to the pen
The lyrics to Johnny Copeland's "Tin Pan Alley" describe what it is like to visit a rough part of town. The singer goes to Tin Pan Alley and is struck by the heat and the intensity of the people who live there. He observes that everyone who lives in Tin Pan Alley seems to be addicted to alcohol. He notes that the women who live in Tin Pan Alley are constantly leaving their partners, drawn away by the allure of the Alley. He then describes a violent scene in which a crap shooter is killed, presumably for cheating. The song then reaches its climax when he sees a man brutally attacking a woman with a two by four. The song ends with the singer being taken away by the police.
The lyrics to "Tin Pan Alley" are a vivid description of a gritty urban environment in which violence and addiction are the norm. The song is widely regarded as a blues classic and has been covered by many artists over the years. The song reflects the African American experience of life in the inner city, where poverty and violence were all too common. The song is a reminder of the harsh realities that many African Americans faced in the early 20th century.
Line by Line Meaning
Went down to Tin Pan Alley
I ventured into Tin Pan Alley
See what was goin' on
To discover what was happening in that area
Things was too hot down there
It was too dangerous to remain in that environment
Couldn't stay very long
I had to leave quickly
Alley's the roughest place I've ever been
Tin Pan Alley is the toughest area I've ever visited
All the peoples down there
All the inhabitants in that locality
Lord, they are livin' for their whisky, wine and gin
They live for their excessive drinking habits
She get up in the mornin'
She woke up in the morning
Before the break a day
Before dawn
Before she can wash her face and hand
Before she could cleanse herself
You know she really did go away
She ran away
What kinda place can this here Alley be?
I wonder what kind of place this Alley is
Every women I get to know
Every woman I have met
This Alley takes her away from me
That alley provokes her to run away
I heard a pistol shoot
I heard a gunshot
Yeah, and it was a .44
The gunshot was probably fired from a .44 caliber gun
Somebody killed a crap shooter
Someone murdered a dice game player
'Cause he didn't shake, rattle and roll
Because he did not win the game
I heard a woman scream
I heard a woman yelling in terror
Yeah, and I peeked through the door
I looked through the opening
Some cat was workin' on Annie with a
A man was attacking Annie with
Lord, Lord with a two by four
a two-by-four wooden object
Alley's the roughest place, I've ever been
Tin Pan Alley is the harshest area I've ever encountered
All the people down there
All the inhabitants around that location
Lord, they are killin' for their whisky, wine and gin
They are murdering each other due to their addiction to alcohol
I saw a cop standing there
I noticed a policeman standing there
With hand on his gun
With his hand on his gun holster
Said this is a raid boy now
He warned me that there was police action
Run, run, nobody run
I was told to flee and to avoid being caught
Yeah, they took me away from Alley
They arrested me in Tin Pan Alley
Lord, they took me right back to the pen
They took me to prison
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Curtis Jones
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@besthillsongworshipsongs48
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@Encrypt-
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Every day