Edward Lee Floyd was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1937. In 1955, in Detroit, where he grew up, he was co-founder of the Falcons, along with Joe Stubbs, Mack Rice and others. The group had a big R&B success in 1959 with “You’re So Fine”, which achieved gold certification. Wilson Pickett joined the group in 1960, replacing Stubbs as lead vocalist and taking them to their second major hit “I Found a Love” in 1962. The group broke up the following year, with Pickett and Floyd each going solo. Floyd recorded a few tracks for Lu-pine Records, before moving to Washington D.C. to team up with a friend, Al Bell. Together they founded a music label and a production company (Safice) and started writing songs. Floyd released several singles, with little success. His luck changed in 1965, when Al Bell accepted a job at Stax Records as promotions director. Floyd went with Bell to Memphis and signed for the Stax label as a staff writer and producer. He settled in straight away, as he explained to Pete Lewis in an interview in Blues & Soul Magazine: “Working at Stax was very easy, because everybody was open-minded”.
He worked at first with Carla Thomas, for whom he wrote the hit single “Comfort Me”, and then with William Bell, often teaming up Steve Cropper. This pairing wrote a number one R&B hit song for Wilson Pickett in early 1966 called “634-5789 (Soulsville USA)”. Floyd also recorded his first Stax single during that year, “Things Get Better”, which didn’t sell well. But things were getting better! Cropper and Floyd had written a song called “Knock on Wood” with Otis Redding in mind, but Jerry Wexler heard Floyd’s version and moved quickly to get it released. It was immediately noticed by several DJs who began playing it on their radio programmes, with the result that orders for the single took off. By the end of 1966, it had become the third R&B number one for the Stax organization. The song was an instant classic, with later covers including versions by David Bowie and Amii Stewart. It was even covered by Otis Redding in 1967, in a duet with Carla Thomas. There are now over a hundred versions listed!
Eddie Floyd went on to record eight albums at Stax, before the company hit financial difficulties and closed in 1975. He also released twenty-six more singles in the same period, most of which entered the charts. The most successful were “Raise Your Hand” (number sixteen R&B chart) in 1967, “I’ve Never Found a Girl” (number two R&B) and a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home to Me” (number four R&B) in 1968. “California Girl” reached number eleven on the R&B chart in 1970.
One of Eddie’s songs that failed to make much impact is still worth a mention. It is his tribute to Otis Redding, written in the UK in 1967, as Eddie was waiting for a plane to take him back to the USA for Otis’ funeral. Booker T. Jones, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Al Jackson Jr. played on the recording, with Booker T. on guitar and keyboards.
Eddie Floyd performing at the White House
Photo: The White House 2013 P040913PS-1021
He wrote many more songs for the Stax roster of artists and began working with Booker T. Jones, as well as Steve Cropper. The best are: “You Don’t Know What You Mean to Me” for Sam & Dave, and “I Love You More Than Words Can Say” for Otis Redding. Eddie has spoken of the strong sense of teamwork that was built at Stax, that contributed a lot to the success of the company: “You know, Stax was all about teamwork. Like if an artist was recording and needed backing singers, I’d go and sing on their record, and in turn they’d sing on mine! That’s just the way we did things”.
Eddie Floyd
Photo: Christoph Van Lent 2009 (Wikimedia Commons)
When Stax shut down, Eddie Floyd worked for a number of record labels, including Malaco and Mercury, but tastes had moved on and he found no chart success. He continued performing live, however, and in the nineties joined up with Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn as part of the Blues Brothers Band on a series of world tours. He also had a cameo role in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000, in which he sang the old song “634-5789” alongside Wilson Pickett and the young Blues guitarist Johnny Lang.
Ten years later, another surprising opportunity came his way. Stax Records had been bought by Concord Records in 2004 and they had resurrected the Stax label in 2006. In 2008 they invited Eddie back to the label, to record some of his old hits, and released the album “Eddie Loves You So” in July of that year. Two further albums were released in 2012 and 2013. First, a Christmas album appeared in 2012 and then an album called “Down by the Sea” a year later.
In 2017 in the UK Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra played a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London, as part of that year’s BBC Proms, which was a celebration of fifty years of Stax Records. At the age of eighty, Eddie made the trip and sang live. The event must have brought back lots of memories!
Eddie Floyd was awarded a Brass Note on the Beale Street Walk of Fame in 2016, followed two years later by his induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. There aren’t many artists who have contributed more to Memphis R&B than him, in a career that has lasted over fifty years.
