Eddie Floyd The Very Best Of

Eddie Floyd

It took Eddie Floyd a full decade and three recording centres before he finally hit the big time with Knock On Wood for Memphis-based Stax.

Born on 25 June 1935 in Montgomery, Alabama, Eddie moved to Detroit with his family when he was young. He formed the first edition of The Falcons in Detroit in 1955. "Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers were doing their thing, so I was kind of inspired by them," says Eddie. They recorded for Mercury in 1956 before re-forming around Eddie, Mack Rice and Joe Stubbs. Floyd's uncle, Robert West, produced their 1959 national hit, the proto-soul You're So Fine, for his Flick label. Newcomer Wilson Pickett fronted The Falcons on their hair-raising 1962 hit I Found A Love for West's LuPine label.

Floyd made solo sides for his uncle as early as 1960 and eventually moved to Washington, D.C., teaming up with Chester Simmons and WUST deejay Al Bell to form Safice Records. When Bell joined Stax as national sales director in the autumn of 1965, Floyd followed him to Memphis. "I said, 'Well, once you get there, put your foot in the door and leave it, and I'll come in behind you!'" says Eddie. Although his Stax debut Things Get Better (When I'm With You) missed the charts, Eddie's songwriting abilities made him invaluable. He and guitarist Steve Cropper of Booker T. & The MG's wrote Knock On Wood at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

According to Cropper, Eddie wanted to write something about superstition – people carrying a rabbit's foot for luck, a song about a lucky charm that would help him win a girl. Cropper countered that people are always saying 'knock on wood' and rapping on a chair or the like, and Eddie immediately wanted to use that.

Floyd remembers that, corny as it may sound, it was storming, raining and lightning that night. He and Cropper were just sitting around in the hotel; whenever Eddie was in town, Cropper came over every night and they wrote, and the next day they went into the studio to put it down. They had to remember everything, because back then they didn't even have tape recorders. With the storm raging outside, they hit on the idea of comparing love to thunder and lightning.

Cropper recalls that they couldn't come up with an intro, until he wondered what In The Midnight Hour would sound like backwards: instead of starting on D and following the dots down, he started on E and followed them up – and that became the intro to Knock On Wood. Eddie adds that the knocking 'boom-boom-boom-boom' came from drummer Al Jackson, because they had been thinking of the old song Open The Door, Richard, with its fellow knocking on the door.

Eddie and Steve originally envisaged Knock On Wood as a hit for someone else. "I thought about Otis Redding right away," says Eddie. The song sat around for a few months, and everyone said it sounded like a record; they just had to convince Jim Stewart, who didn't want to release it – but he did. When the pile-driving Knock On Wood hit #1 R&B and #28 pop, Stax boss Stewart was glad he had given in.

Bill Dahl

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