Hiram George Runnels (1796-1857)

    Hiram G. Runnels, planter and representative at the Convention of 1845, was born on December 17, 1796, in Hancock County, Georgia. At an early age he moved with his parents to Mississippi. During the Indian wars he served for a short time in the United States Army. From 1822 to 1830 he was state auditor of Mississippi. In 1829 he was elected to represent Hinds County in the Mississippi legislature. He was defeated in the race for the office of governor of Mississippi in 1831, was elected in 1833, and ran unsuccessfully again in 1835. Runnels' service as president of the Union Bank in 1838 led to a dispute wherein he caned Mississippi governor McNutt in the streets of Jackson and dueled with Mississippian editor Volney E. Howard in 1840. In 1841 he again represented Hinds County in the legislature. Runnels moved to Texas in 1842 and became a planter on the Brazos River. He represented Brazoria County in the Convention of 1845. He died in Houston on December 17, 1857, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. On February 1, 1858, Runnels County was named in his honor. Source

Section C3
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

29° 45.974, -095° 23.215 

Trinidad "Trini" López III (1937-2020)

    Trinidad "Trini" López III, who achieved worldwide acclaim as a recording artist and performer, was born in Dallas, on May 15, 1937, to Trinidad López II and Petra (Gonzáles) López. When he was eleven years old, he received a twelve-dollar guitar from his father, who taught him to play the instrument. López called this gift and instruction "the biggest reward of my life." One of six children, he lived in the Little Mexico neighborhood in Dallas. There, the promising singer performed on street corners and earned coins for renditions of traditional Mexican songs. At the age of fifteen, influenced by bluesman T-Bone Walker and, later, rocker Elvis Presley, López organized the Big Beats band, which performed at the fashionable Cipango Club in Dallas. He dropped out of N. R. Crozier Tech High School (later Dallas High) in his senior year to support his family with his singing and playing.

    In 1958 López met Buddy Holly, which led the Beats to garner a contract with Columbia Records. However, the company refused to allow him to sing on the two instrumentals it issued. López quit the band and signed two more ill-fated contracts, first with the Dallas-based Volk Records, where he made his solo debut with the self-penned song The Right to Rock, and then with King Records. The singer refused Volk’s request that he hide his ethnicity by changing his last name, and King issued a number of singles, none of which charted.

    His performing residency at P.J.’s, a Los Angeles club, was a pivotal moment in his quest for a professional career. Frank Sinatra, who saw him perform there, was impressed with his talent and helped him sign a recording contract with Reprise Records in 1963. Owing to the high energy of his performances at the club, his debut album Trini Lopez at P.J.’s was recorded live. The album proved a resounding success and produced several hits, including his uniquely popular version of If I Had a Hammer. The upbeat folk song reached Number 3 on Billboard and remained on the pop charts for eleven weeks. It also reached Number 1 in thirty-six countries and sold more than a million copies. His album soon sparked a sequel - By Popular Demand!! More Trini Lopez at PJ’s which was released later in 1963.

    Other career hit songs included I’m Coming Home, Cindy, which, along with Lemon Tree, reached Number 2 on the Easy Listening Chart. Michael hit Number 7, Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now reached Number 6, and The Bramble Bush made it to Number 4. All told, López had sixteen Top 40 songs for the five-year period between 1963 and 1968. A key to his success lay in his unique ability to engage his audience. "Making songs danceable helped me a lot," López recalled. "Discotheques back in those days were not only playing my songs, they were playing my album all the way through." He also imbued his songs "with joyous hoots and trills" from his Mexican heritage. As a youngster growing up in Dallas, he had suffered prejudice but clung to his heritage throughout his life. "I’m proud to be a Mexicano," he asserted to the Seattle Times in 2017.

    López’s success with his early albums led to a well-received live performing schedule on the Las Vegas show circuit and in venues throughout the world. He became an international headliner who could brag that he stole the show "every night" from the Beatles prior to their American debut, when he shared the Olympia Theatre in Paris with the then lesser-known group. He declared years later that the French press wrote, "Bravo, Trini López! Who are the Beatles?"

    Over the course of a long career, López recorded more than thirty albums, mostly with the Reprise Label. During the mid-1960s he released an average of about five albums per year. He covered a variety of styles, including folk, blues, pop, and Latin. Although his recording career eventually slowed down, he continued to release albums through 2011, when he recorded Into the Future, an offering of songs made popular by Frank Sinatra. In his later years, he recorded and released several albums independently. He also appeared in half a dozen films between 1965 and 1995, including Marriage on the Rocks (1965), for which he also recorded Sinner Man for the soundtrack; The Dirty Dozen (1967); The Phynx (1970); and Antonio (1973), in which he played the title role. He starred in his own television variety show in 1969.

    A talented guitarist, López designed the Trini Lopez Standard and the Lopez Deluxe guitars, produced from 1964 through 1971 for the Gibson Guitar Corporation. Both models became prized by notable guitarists and collectors. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters credited López with helping create the band’s “sound.” Grohl commented, "Every album we have ever made, from the first to the latest, was recorded with my red Trini Lopez signature guitar. It is the sound of our band, and my most prized possession from the day I bought it in 1992."

    The music industry recognized López for his performances and musical achievements. In 2002 he was inducted into the Las Vegas Casino Legends Hall of Fame. In 2003 he was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame. My Name is Lopez, a documentary film about his life, was completed in 2020 and released April 2022.

    In 2020 Trini López fell ill with COVID-19 during the pandemic that spread throughout the United States. He died at the age of eighty-three on August 11, 2020, in Rancho Mirage, California. Source

Mausoleum Chapel
Calvary Hill Cemetery and Mausoleum
Dallas

32° 86.627, -096° 87.301

Johnny "Clyde" Copeland (1937-1997)

    Songwriter and blues guitarist Johnny Copeland was born in Haynesville, Louisiana, on March 27, 1937, the son of sharecroppers. Copeland developed an interest in the blues at an early age. His parents separated when he was six months old, and his mother took him to Magnolia, Arkansas. When his father died a few years later Copeland inherited a guitar and began learning to play it. When Johnny was thirteen years old, the Copelands moved to Houston, where the boy first saw a performance by guitarist T-Bone Walker. In 1954, influenced by Walker, Copeland and his friend Joe "Guitar" Hughes formed a band, the Dukes of Rhythm. While his musical interest grew, Copeland engaged in boxing and acquired the nickname Clyde.

 
The band played regularly in several leading Houston blues clubs, including Shady's Playhouse and the Eldorado Ballroom. While with the Dukes of Rhythm, Copeland also played backup for such blues figures as Big Mama Thornton, Freddie King, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. In 1958 he recorded his first single with Mercury Records, Rock 'n' Roll Lily, which became a regional hit. In the 1960s he achieved only limited regional success as he recorded with various small and independent labels. His hits included Please Let Me Know and Down on Bending Knees, recorded with the All Boy and the Golden Eagle labels, both based in Houston.

    During the early 1970s Copeland toured the "Texas Triangle" - Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas - and developed a reputation as one of the most frenetic live performers in Texas-style blues. In 1974 he moved to New York City, where he worked at a Brew 'n' Burger during the day and performed in clubs at night. In a few years Copeland became a major draw, attracting receptive audiences at clubs in Harlem and Greenwich Village, and leaving his mark by "brandishing his sizzling guitar, like a slick, sharp weapon." In 1981 he signed with Rounder Records, which released the album Copeland Special, recorded in 1979 with saxophonists Arthur Blythe and Byard Lancaster. This album inspired Copeland to cut a series of albums with the label in the 1980s, including Make My Home Where I Hang My Hat (1982) and Texas Twister (1983), which also featured guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. With this recording success, Copeland toured the United States and Europe. In 1986, while on a ten-city tour in West Africa, he recorded Bringing It All Back Home, using local musicians. The album included imaginative hybrids of blues mixed with African idioms. Copeland thus became the first American blues musician to record an album in Africa. That same year he won a Grammy for the best traditional blues recording for Showdown! (1985), an album he recorded with fellow blues musicians Robert Cray and Albert Collins. His follow-up album, Ain't Nothing But a Party (Live), earned him a Grammy nomination in 1988.

    Throughout the decade he played and recorded with a furious Texas-style blues guitar, performing burning guitar licks that became his trademark and earned him another nickname, the "Fire Maker." Despite adversity, Copeland continued to perform throughout the 1990s. He showed off his songwriting talents when he released his albums Flying High for Verve Records in 1992 and Catch Up With the Blues for Polygram in 1994. The albums included the hits Life's Rainbow and Circumstances. In 1994 he was diagnosed with heart disease, and he spent the next few years checking in and out of hospitals and undergoing a series of open-heart operations. He had been placed on an L-VAD (left ventricular assist device), a battery-powered pump designed for patients suffering from congenital heart defects. He appeared on CNN and ABC-TV's Good Morning America wearing the L-VAD, an event that gave both Copeland and the medical device greater national exposure. He lived a remarkable length of time, twenty months, on the L-VAD.

    On January 1, 1997, he received a successful heart transplant, and in a few months he resumed touring. During the summer his heart developed a defective valve, and he was admitted to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York for heart surgery. He died on July 3, 1997, of complications during surgery, and was buried in Paradise South Cemetery in Pearland, Brazoria County, Texas. He was survived by his wife, Sandra, and seven children. Copeland had a lasting impact on Texas-style blues and played a major part in the blues boom of the 1980s. In his career he earned a Grammy, four W.C. Handy awards, and the album of the year award from the French National Academy of Jazz (1995). In 1984 he also became one of the few blues musicians to perform behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Source

Block 3

Paradise South Cemetery

Pearland

29° 34.076, -095° 20.912

Frederic Douglas "Curly" Neal (1942-2020)

    Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Fred Neal attended James B. Dudley High School and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina from 1959 to 1963. At Smith, he averaged 23.1 points a game and was named All-Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) guard. Neal played for 22 seasons (from 1963 to 1985) with the Globetrotters, appearing in more than 6,000 games in 97 countries. His shaved head earned him his nickname, a reference to the Three Stooges' Curly Howard, and made him one of the most recognizable Globetrotters. 

    In the 1970s, an animated version of Neal starred with various other Globetrotters in the Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon Harlem Globetrotters as well as its spinoff, The Super Globetrotters. The animated Globetrotters also made three appearances in The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Neal himself appeared with Meadowlark Lemon, Marques Haynes, and his other fellow Globetrotters in a live-action Saturday morning TV show, The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine, in 1974-75, which also featured Rodney Allen Rippy and Avery Schreiber. Neal also appeared in The White Shadow, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, and The Love Boat. 

    On January 11, 2008, the Globetrotters announced that Neal's number 22 would be retired on February 15 in a special ceremony at Madison Square Garden as part of "Curly Neal Weekend." Neal was just the fifth Globetrotter in the team's 82-year history to have his number retired, joining Wilt Chamberlain (13), Meadowlark Lemon (36), Marques Haynes (20) and Goose Tatum (50). On January 31, 2008, it was announced that Neal would be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. He was also granted the Harlem Globetrotters' prestigious "Legends" ring, which is presented to those who make major humanitarian contributions and work for the Harlem Globetrotters organization. 

    On March 26, 2020, Neal died at his home outside Houston at the age of 77. A mural commemorating Neal's achievements both as a Globetrotter and during his time at Dudley High School is painted in the basketball gym of the Hayes-Taylor Memorial YMCA at 1101 East Market Street in Greensboro, North Carolina. He had two daughters, Rocurl (Raquel) and Laverne Neal, and six grandchildren, David, Dante, Jayden, Brandon, Deja, and Hailey. Neal lived in Houston with his fiancée Linda Ware until his death.  

Mausoleum

Rosewood Funeral Home and Cemetery

Humble 

29° 57.867, -095° 15.958