Shemekia Copeland

Blues vocalist Shemekia Copeland is a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also proves capable of a subtler range of emotions when she strays outside the lines of the blues tradtions. Her 1998 Alligator debut, Turn the Heat Up!, featured a career-elevating version of "Ghetto Child," a classic by her father, renowned Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, that has been part of her performance repertoire ever since. She released three more acclaimed rough-and-rowdy recordings that decade before revealing a more nuanced, slow-burnin...