“As known for her social stances as she is for her deep, mature, outstanding blues voice”

Copeland says what she wants, and she rarely apoligizes for it. She’s as known for her social stances as she is for her deep, mature, outstanding blues voice…

Her father pushed her hard and saturated her life with the blues, but Copeland soaked it in, and even today, never questions her path or her life as a blues artist. Her dad was a social activist, though it didn’t mark his career the way it did hers. He wrote a song, “Ghetto Child,” in the 1950s about children in a poor Texas neighborhood that she record and still snarls on stage as a crowd favorite, though it makes her sad to sing it.

By Dan England, before Shemekia’s performance at the Greeley Blues Jam, in Greeley, Colorado, on June 8. Read the full story in Bandwagon (pages 14 and 15).