Shemekia Copeland

The daughter of renowned Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, award-winning blues singer Shemekia Copeland early on projected a maturity beyond her years, fashioning herself as a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also capable of subtle emotions. Her 1998 Alligator debut Turn the Heat Up! featured a career-elevating version of her father's classic "Ghetto Child" that has been part of her performance repertoire ever since. By the time she gave birth to her first child in 2017 and released America's Child a year later, she had transformed herself into a mature artist of vision and depth who could inhabit virtually any genre of music without sacrificing the power and passion that initially established her reputation.