Anthony Floyd is the son of the great Eddie Floyd and ‘Tonight’s The Night’ is the accomplished baritone’s debut long player. Eddie’s in the producer’s seat for each of the 12 cuts (Stax veteran Lester Snell handles the arrangements, by the way) and Eddie also lend a vocal hand on a couple of cuts – the ultra-catchy, old school opener ‘Waste Of Time’ and the statelier album title cut. The former is a wonderful recording that really does reel back the years… bright and breezy, its uplifting simplicity makes you understand why you got involved in the whole crazy soul thing in the first place; the latter’s not as effective, suffering from the usual drawback of low budget soul recordings.
Oddly that problem’s not as apparent on the sets big ballads – ‘Eye To Eye’, ‘Lost Time” ‘Miss Big Time’ and the dramatic ‘I’ll Get By’. That last one has a peculiar feel to it – but it’s a real grower and you can’t deny Anthony’s commitment and old-fashioned soul approach. The album’s main focus though is meant to be the Floyd family’s tribute to James Brown – ‘Don’t Forget About James’. The song came out last year and made some waves on the underground soul scene and I never did quite work out its appeal or why a Stax soul man should be so keen to join the Godfather’s bandwagon. The song’s here again anyway and there’s also a remix which, to these ears anyway, doesn’t add too much to the original incarnation… I’ll stick to the delightful ‘Waste Of Time’.
Eddie Floyd, we’re told, is quite ill at the moment. Hopefully he’ll recover enough to see son, Anthony enjoy some success. The album is currently available from all the usual internet outlets and if you like proper, rough-hewn, rustic soul you’d do worse that at least checkout the cut ‘Waste Of Time’.
(BB) 3/5
