Al Copley Returns to the Knick Dance Floor Where Roomful of Blues Made History

Al Copley Returns to the Knick Dance Floor Where Roomful of Blues Made History Friday, Sept. 25, bringing his quintet to Westerly for an evening of swing, blues, and boogie-woogie at the Knick Music Lab.

This isn’t simply a veteran musician playing another local show. Copley’s history and the Knick’s history are intertwined.

Copley co-founded Roomful of Blues with Duke Robillard in Westerly in the late 1960s. The band eventually established a residency at the Knickerbocker Cafe that lasted roughly 15 years, helping turn the room into one of southern New England’s important homes for blues and roots music.

Now Copley is coming back to that same storied dance floor for the Knick’s first dance night of fall.

And yes, this one is meant for dancing.

From Westerly to Roomful of Blues

Copley was still a teenager when the musical partnership that became Roomful of Blues began taking shape.

He had become fascinated with boogie-woogie piano and Chicago blues, absorbing the work of players including Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis and Otis Spann. By his mid-teens, he was already performing around the Westerly area.

Copley and Robillard formed Roomful of Blues in 1967. The early group concentrated on Chicago electric blues before its musical vocabulary expanded dramatically.

A trip to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival in 1971 helped convince the musicians to pursue a horn-driven sound rooted in the jumping blues, jazz and R&B of the 1940s and ’50s.

That decision became central to the Roomful of Blues sound.

The group eventually backed some of the musicians who had helped inspire it, including Big Joe Turner and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. Roomful also shared the stage with Count Basie, who became an admirer of the band.

Copley remained with Roomful for 16 years before leaving in 1984 and moving to Europe.

A Career That Went Far Beyond Westerly

Copley’s departure from Roomful began another long chapter.

He established a solo career in Europe, performing at jazz and blues festivals and developing a reputation for a highly energetic piano style that moves between boogie-woogie, blues, swing and jazz.

His résumé eventually connected him with an extraordinary collection of musicians.

Copley has recorded with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Lou Rawls, Big Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Duke Robillard and others. His performance history includes appearances with B.B. King, Etta James, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ruth Brown, the original Blues Brothers and Big Mama Thornton.

He also played a series of Royal Albert Hall dates with Jimmie Vaughan opening for Eric Clapton and later opened additional shows for Clapton himself.

In 2002 and again in 2009, Copley performed his own symphonic orchestrations before audiences of more than 25,000 with the Boston Festival Orchestra.

Through all of it, the Westerly connection remained.

Back to the Knick

That’s what makes Friday night’s location particularly interesting.

Roomful of Blues didn’t merely pass through the Knickerbocker. The band’s lengthy residency there helped establish both the group and the club.

The Knick became a place where audiences could hear the increasingly sophisticated mixture of blues, swing, jazz and R&B that Roomful was developing, years before the band accumulated an international following.

Decades later, the building is now the Knick Music Lab, part of the UNITED Theatre’s expanded arts campus.

For Dance Night, the room returns to one of its original purposes: putting a band onstage and people on the dance floor.

The UNITED describes the show as an evening of swing, so this isn’t a concert where everyone is expected to remain planted in a chair. The Al Copley Quintet will be playing the room as a dance band.

No dance partner or elaborate swing-dance experience is required. The point is to use the floor.

A Different Kind of Friday Night at the Knick

The Knick does not currently have a working kitchen, so anyone expecting the old dinner-and-show experience should plan accordingly.

Prepackaged snacks and soft drinks will be available for purchase, along with a limited bar serving prepackaged beer, wine and canned cocktails.

The music begins at 8 p.m.

For longtime local music fans, there is a considerable amount of history packed into that simple setup: Al Copley at a piano, a band behind him and people dancing at the Knick.

Nearly six decades after Copley helped start Roomful of Blues in Westerly, he’s coming back to one of the rooms where the band’s sound became part of the city’s musical identity.

More information is available at the Event Website link below.

To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.

Details

Event: Dance Night at The Knick with the Al Copley Quintet
Date: Friday, Sept. 25, 2026
Time: 8 p.m.
Venue: Knick Music Lab
Address: 35 Railroad Avenue, Westerly, RI
Music: Swing, blues, boogie-woogie and jazz
Format: Live music and dancing
Food: No working kitchen; prepackaged concession snacks available
Drinks: Soft drinks plus a limited bar with prepackaged beer, wine and canned cocktails
Presented By: The UNITED Theatre / Knick Music Lab

 

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