Eddie Floyd was born on 25 June 1935 in Montgomery, Alabama.
His parents, a truck driver and a nurse, moved from Alabama to Detroit when Eddie was young, and his uncle Robert West formed the Lu Pine label in the Motor City at the same time that Berry Gordy founded Motown.
Eddie started his recording and performing career with a Lu Pine outfit called The Falcons, a gritty late-Fifties harmony group. History does not record if they produced any extraordinary creations.
After The Falcons broke up, Floyd moved to Washington DC and commuted to Memphis to write songs for artists on the Stax roster.
Eddie was one of the real pioneers at Stax. His Knock On Wood hit was one of the Memphis company’s first Gold awards and he was there literally until they closed and bolted the doors on the place.
Apart from writing his own hits, he wrote songs for his fellow artists on the Stax label including 634-5789 for Wilson Pickett, Comfort Me for Carla Thomas, Don’t Mess With Cupid, for Otis Redding and Someone’s Watching Over You for Solomon Burke.
After Stax, Floyd cut an album called Experience for the Malaco label, but he discovered that disco had supplanted soul in the marketplace.
Ironically, one of the last big disco hits was Amii Stewart’s 1979 cover of Knock On Wood.
