Johnny Coppin (born 5 April 1946) is an English singer/songwriter, composer and poetry anthologist. He plays guitar and piano and has written and recorded many albums as a solo artist. He has a weekly one-hour show on BBC Radio Gloucestershire entitled Folk Roots.

Coppin first came to prominence as one of the founding members of Decameron. After four albums the band split and Coppin formed his own band in 1977 with Phil Beer (guitar, fiddle, vocals), Steve Hutt (bass, vocals), Mick Candler (drums) and Tony Bennett (guitar, vocals). He and these bands collaborated with Nigel Mazlyn Jones on his 1976 Ship To Shore (album) and 1979 Sentinel albums.

In December 1978 and December 1979-January 1980 Coppin was the musical director for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham. Anthony Head (Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) played Joseph and also made contributions to Coppin's second solo album, No Going Back.

After 3 solo albums of original songs, Coppin found a rich vein of material when he decided to set poems written by famous Gloucestershire authors to music. His first effort, Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill, was premiered at the Cheltenham Literary Festival to much acclaim. Coppin has chosen poems from writers such as Ivor Gurney, F. W. Harvey and Frank Mansell. Perhaps the most famous poet whose work Coppin set to music was Laurie Lee and they even collaborated on the album Edge of Day.

Coppin has been the Musical Director for the Festival Players, a touring theatre company, after 1992.

Albums

Decameron

• Say Hello to the Band (1973)
• Mammoth Special (1974}
• Third Light (1975)
• Tomorrow's Pantomime (1976)
• Afterwords (2001)

Solo

• Roll On Dreamer (1978)
• No Going Back (1979)
• Get Lucky (1982)
• Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill (1983)
• Line of Blue (1985)
• English Morning (1987)
• Edge of Day with Laurie Lee (1989)
• The Glorious Glosters (1990)
• Songs on Lonely Roads (1990)
• Songs and Carols for a West Country Christmas (1990)
• Force of the River (1993)
• The Gloucestershire Collection (1994)
• A Country Christmas (1995)
• The Shakespeare Songs (1997)
• A Journey - compilation (2001)
• Keep the Flame EP with Paul Burgess and Mick Dolan (2004)
• The Winding Stair (2005)

Books

• A Country Christmas (1997)
• Between the Severn and the Wye (1993)
• Forest and Vale and High Blue Hill (1991)

References

1. Official Anthony Stewart Head Audio Work. Retrieved on 30 December 2006.

External links

• Johnny Coppin website
• Decameron website
• Festival Players website