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Though she has just now released only her fourth CD, Shemekia Copeland has clearly made a huge impact on the blues scene. That much was confirmed in 2003 when her third CD, "Talking To Strangers," was given two of the highest honors a blues record can get -- the W.C Handy awards for best blues album and best contemporary blues album.

To Copeland, though, the awards signified something beyond the excellence of her record. They represented a step toward one of her primary career goals -- to help the blues as a genre grow, evolve and remain relevant.

"It is always great to get an award for doing something that you love to do," says Copeland, 26. "That means a whole lot to me. And what also means a whole lot to me is that there are so many people out here that -- I call them blues Nazis and they kind of hold the music back by not wanting it to change -- I've proved to me, to myself, that people do want change, because everything that I've thrown out at these people, they've liked it and it's all been different."

Copeland as an artist is also evolving and growing from CD to CD. Her new release, "The Soul Truth" is a notably different style of record from "Talking To Strangers."

That previous CD, which was produced by the legendary New Orleans' Dr. John, emphasized a funkier, somewhat less pumped up sound than the high energy rocking blues that characterized Copeland's first two recordings.

"The Soul Truth," on the other hand, lives up to the title by emphasizing Copeland's modern take on the classic soul sound of the late 1960s. Produced by Steve Cropper, who, as a songwriter and guitarist on many of the most famous soul records of the 1960s, was a key architect of the style, "The Soul Truth" features a more full-bodied and aggressive sound than "Talking To Strangers."

The fact that Copeland, a native of Harlem in New York City, has made a CD strongly based in classic soul shouldn't come as a surprise.

As the daughter of the late Johnny "Clyde" Copeland, a guitarist/singer whose music was rooted in rough-and-tumble Texas blues, Copeland became immersed in that genre. But although his music didn't necessarily reflect it, Copeland's father was a huge fan of soul music.

Consequently, Copeland grew up listening to the classic soul records of artists like Aretha Franklin, Etta James, O.V. Wright, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett.

The soul influence has always been apparent in Copeland's singing -- even if her music leaned more toward sassy blues and rock.

But for "The Soul Truth," Copeland felt the time was right to put more emphasis on her soulful side.

To help accomplish that goal, she sought out Cropper, unaware that he had stepped away from record producing during the past decade and a half.

"I felt really honored because he had turned down so many others," she says. "He decided that he wanted to do this, so I'm very proud of that."

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