Texas Twister

Texas Twister

Editorial Reviews
<"b0000003lo7499"> Amazon.com
A collection of four of the Texas guitarist's sessions for Rounder Records, Texas Twister doesn't quite pack the punch of the individual albums, but is still an excellent introduction to the guitarist's work. Underappreciated until the last years of his life--though daughter Shemekia has been shaking things up since her debut album was released in 1998--Copeland had everything that epitomized the Texas blues: scorching guitar riffs; a growling, expressive voice; and a sense of the grand that one rarely finds in any other flavor of the blues. From smoking slow blues like "It's My Own Tears" and "Honky Tonkin'" to more uptempo numbers like "Claim Jumper" and "Love Utopia," everything here is rock-solid. What's extra special, though, are the final three tracks--drawn from 1986's Bringin' It All Back Home--which, by setting Copeland's blues to African rhythms and backing music, highlight both the family resemblance between the two types of music, and how far they've diverged. --Genevieve Williams

<"b0000003lo5228"> From Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD
Johnny Clyde Copeland, a recording artist since the late 1950s, is one of the most imposing of the Texas blues singers and guitarists. He and his synthesis of New Orleans funk and Kansas City jazz only reached a sizable audience in the 1980s, when he relocated to New York and landed a record deal with Rounder. Parts of four albums for the Cambridge label ballast this 1986 collection, a fine entry point for novitiates but something less for longtime admirers. The horn-sumptuous Copeland Special -... read more