Floyd Morris had a prodigious career performing,recording and composing with The Johnny Pate Quintet (mid-50s), Al Grey, Oscar Brown Jr, Bobby Hutcherson, Donald Byrd, Junior Parker, Little Milton, Andre Williams, Curtis Mayfield, The Staple Singers, Barbara Lewis, Sam Cooke, The Chi-Lites.
Floyd Morris was a lynch pin in his home city Chicago’s music scene. He’d been a member of Four Shades Of Rhythm, a group that was resident at the city’s Bar-O-Music venue and was an in-demand keyboard player on Chicago recording sessions, including ones for Gene Chandler, The Impressions and Etta James amongst many others. In a story typical of the record business, Morris should have been credited with a number three chart hit in 1968, but ‘Soulful Strut’ was credited to Young-Holt Unlimited. The track was actually the backing track to ‘Am I The Same Girl’ by Barbara Acklin. All the producers did was drop a piano solo by Floyd Morris over that stripped-down track! Three years before that Morris had recorded an album for the Select label, ‘The ConSoul Of Floyd Morris’. A Cashbox magazine review of ‘Pompton Turnpike’, the single from the LP described Morris as ‘top-flight organ talent’ and that the single could be a ‘solid seller’.
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