Blues On Stage - King Floyd

King Floyd
@ Coffman Union Grand Ballroom, March 15, 1997

King Floyd 3/15/97
Coffman Union Grand Ballroom
Photo © 1997 by Tom Asp
All rights reserved

Advertised as the Blues Bash, the University of the Blues Series held its spring quarter finale with this special Saturday night show featuring soul singer King Floyd and New Orleans guitar great Earl King. The show was held in the grand ballroom at Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota. The 1940's art deco setting added a nice touch to this show.

The Butanes, local blues favorites, opened each set and then accompanied both performers with some outstanding music. They had their big band featuring Curtis Obeda on guitar, John Lindberg on bass, Dave Hostetler on drums, Virgil Nelson on keyboards, Jim Greenwell on tenor sax, Mike Nelson on trombone, and singers Maurice Jacox, Deb Brown and Aisha Baker. The Butanes put on a very good performance and demonstrated some finesse in playing behind King Floyd with no rehearsal.

King Floyd 3/15/97
Coffman Union Grand Ballroom
Photo © 1997 by Tom Asp
All rights reserved

King Floyd was born in New Orleans 52 years ago. He wouldn't tell us his age at the show but I found out anyway. His career is quite interesting. He started singing gospel songs at the young age of 9 and debuted professionally at age 16. He was in the Army from 1961 to 1963, so if that is right he lied about his age. He moved to California in 1964 and started his recording career for Original Sound in 1965. In 1969 he moved back to New Orleans and recorded one of his biggest hits, Groove Me, which started a successful string of soul recordings running through the 1970's. When the disco craze hit and he saw a decline in his record sales he drifted out of music for some time. It's great to see King Floyd back on stage and recording again. He has a great southern soul voice that brings back the sweet sound of early R & B and soul music.

King Floyd's recent CD called Choice Cuts features his most popular recordings from this time period including Groove Me, Baby Let Me Kiss You, Woman Don't Go Astray and Body English. He was influenced by a wide variety of performers including Fats Domino, Earl King, Otis Redding, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Joe Tex, Jackie Wilson, Tommy Ridgley, to name of few.

His style and voice on this night had the funky punch of a James Brown combined with the deep soul of Otis Redding. He uses those "grunts", "heys" and "shouts" to good effect and really put on a crowd pleasing show. At one point after he had finished a wonderful rendition of the Temptations My Girl done in a reggae rhythm, he asked if we liked it and said he was going to record it on his next album. The enthusiastic response from the audience told him that was a good decision. I sure hope he comes back for another performance in the near future.

E-mail Ray Stiles at: mnblues@aol.com