Eddie Floyd's entry in the Stax Profiles series may not be a definitive compilation for the artist. That’s not really the name of the game here, but compiler Dan "Elwood Blues" Aykroyd does an excellent job of capturing the man's range regardless. "Knock on Wood" is present and accounted for, of course, as is a lesser-known version of that pesky Pickett's "634-5789," which Floyd and Cropper happened to co-write. But in addition to the regulation Stax-sound chestnuts, there's also "California Girl," a syrupy, string-laden slice of pop bliss, which is about as un-Memphis as the titular state itself.
Such a drastic difference in style might be interpreted by some as a lack of personality on Floyd's part, but in reality, it's just proof that the man was an amazing craftsman, perhaps more so than he was an artist with shooting-star intensity. His ability to handle any variant of soul music, and do it just as well as he did his most famous material, is staggering. Although it's a given each listener will have favorites and least-favorites amidst this set, the difference in esteem from track to track has a lot more to do with individual taste than objective quality.
My favorite Eddie Floyd? Rock Eddie, hands down. The comp's opening track, "Big Bird" (famously inspired by an aborted flight to the funeral of Otis Redding), pushes Stax's house band to their absolute limits with a heavy guitar and snare rapport in the verses you could cut with a knife. And then there's "When the Sun Goes Down," Floyd's 1971 blues-rock tour de force, which unpacks Led Zeppelin's entire first-album trick bag (think "How Many More Times") before putting Page and Plant to shame with a genuine dose of soul power. These tracks, to me, represent the essence of Eddie Floyd as an artist. More than any other musician on Stax, he stood at the crossroads of soul, rock and blues, straddling the three strains of black music like fault lines. To dig into his deeper cuts is to find some of the most thoroughly electrifying music in the Stax canon. And for a guy who, somewhere in the world, is probably still being mistaken for Wilson Pickett, that's not too bad at all.
In celebration of the recently-released Stax Profiles series, the Modern Pea Pod is hosting Stax Records Week. In the following days, we'll cover discs by Otis Redding, Booker T. & The M.G.'s, Rance Allen, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, and the Staple Singers, all of them specially compiled by noted musical figures from Elvis Costello to Steve Cropper. Watch this page for updates!
Reviewed by Zach Hoskins
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