Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood by Eddie Floyd

Author:Eddie Floyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BMG Books
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

CALIFORNIA GIRL

I’ve heard it said that 80 percent of success is “showing up.” Well, in the summer of 1968, I was in at Stax, and Isaac Hayes was rehearsing up an arrangement of the Sam Cooke ballad “Bring It on Home to Me” for a different Sam—Sam Moore and his singing partner Dave Prater. To ease some of the bad blood over the fact that Atlantic had only ever loaned Sam & Dave to Stax, it had been agreed that the duo would record their next few singles exclusively for “us” before being taken back.

But Sam & Dave didn’t show that day, and I did. So I said to Isaac, “Well, do it on me!” Isaac’s arrangement was quite a bit faster than Sam Cooke’s, and of course once it fell into the hands of the M.G.’s it quickly took on a very Memphis sound, also different from Sam’s original. Compare the backing tracks and you’ll hear exactly what I mean. And if you do so, you can’t say I sung it like Sam Cooke either; I sung it different because Isaac was playing it different, and my voice just went along with the melody. We put brass on it, got the backing vocalists in—Ollie and the Nightingales were the regulars for that work at that time—and put it on the market. Coming hot on the heels of “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do),” I guess the public—and radio—was ready to embrace me some more, and “Bring It on Home to Me” went Top 5 R&B and Top 20 pop.

Quite a few other artists took on that same song in 1968, including Aretha and Wilson. It’s one of those things with soul music, how a certain song will become popular for a period of time and the public wants to hear their favorite singer(s) put a personal spin on it. For whatever reason, mine scored biggest. Sadly, I don’t sing it live too often; the house musicians would only know Sam Cooke’s arrangement, and I’d be saying, “Well, now you have to learn mine.” Often it was easier to leave it alone. It’s not like I don’t have other songs in my bag!

If my last couple of singles had cemented my standing with a certain kind of soul audience, my earlier ones on Stax were beginning to show their far-reaching appeal. In December of ’68, a young woman by the name of Janis Joplin came to town to play at what we had called the “Stax/Volt Yuletide Thing.” As with “Hit the Road Stax,” when Arthur Conley came on board, it seemed a good idea to include a special guest from outside of Stax. Janis had appeared at Monterey the previous year, fronting Big Brother & the Holding Company, and her love of rhythm & blues was apparent from her inclusion of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain.” Now she had broken up that group and put together a new one, the Kozmic Blues

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