January 2, 1996
Web posted at: 6:25 a.m. EST
From Correspondent Mark Scheerer
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Grammy-winning Texas bluesman Johnny Copeland is waiting for a heart transplant. But in the meantime, with a battery-operated device to keep his heart pumping, he's still on stage playing the blues.
"I try to write something that makes you think," Copeland says. (196K AIFF sound or 196K WAV sound)
One of his recent songs, "Circumstances," talks about the ruling force in life, as Copeland sees it. "Who controls my life?/ Circumstances/ Who controls your life/ Circumstances/ Who controls everything/ Circumstances," he sings.
Circumstances took control of the 58-year-old blues performer's life in the form of a failing heart, now sustained only by the mechanism. "It flows the blood through properly so you can keep your heartbeat; it beats on time," he says. (131K AIFF sound or 131K WAV sound)
Copeland's doctors were all in favor of his return to the stage shortly after his operation last spring. "He's not just waiting for the heart transplant -- he's living his life," says Dr. Mehmet Oz of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "The heart transplant will come and when it comes, I think he will do well. But he's not just waiting for that day to come."
On a weekly hospital visit, Copeland gets his controller unit changed. The head of the regional transplant program, a transplant patient himself, wishes more people would not only sign organ donor cards but also make their intentions clear to relatives in order to avoid legal snafus in the event of an accident.
"If everyone donated that could, we could transplant all 44,000 people waiting right now for an organ transplant within a year," says Larry Swasey of New York Regional Transplant Program Inc. (83K AIFF sound or 83K WAV sound)
Copeland stays close to the other patients in the unit, and stays close to home. But he also stays on the job, doing three or four gigs a month at New York clubs, playing the blues he learned from watching T-Bone Walker play in a Houston nightclub in the '50s.
Right now, the beat of Johnny Copeland's heart is as important as the beat of his music. Copeland says that he's just glad to be able to play.
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