REVIEW . Back to Daytona

In the beginning, there was the beach. They called it Daytona. It would become the "World's Most Famous Beach" because men raced cars there from the dawn of the automobile. Then came the sound: the music and beat of the beach. The music floated out from little bars and saloons up and down Main Street.

Floyd Miles made that sound. He was a part of its genesis, of that street, of that era - sweet soul music and blues. A touch of mellow keyboard, the sting and bite of a blues guitar lick, the pump of a steady, thudding bass line, the snap of a snare, and a vocal with grit, meaning and substance. No fluff. Real music. Music that grabbed you and shook you.

This was music that made the old beach town rock. Down at the Surf Bar, under the boardwalk, the Universals pumped it out, night after night. Floyd was there, popping his drums and singing in that Brook Benton-Otis Redding-Chuck Jackson voice of his that brought us back again and again. "Us" were other musicians around town, playing the Bikini Room, the Martinique (known as the "Q") , the Wedge, the Beachcomber. Somehow it all got mixed together and became a distinctive sound and rhythm that survives today still in the little clubs that dot the strip facing the Atlantic Ocean in a place called Daytona Beach.

Gregg and Duane Allman studied at the edge of the stage where Floyd performed. Other talented musicians, such as Bob Greenlee, Pete Carr and Jim Shepley, studied and learned from Floyd. "Copped his sound" is the expression. Duane and Carr wound up as session players in Muscle Shoals. Shepley is still a guitar player extraordinaire and songwriter in Connecticut. And Greenlee? He owns a recording studio and record label. He is unique. He Is the only one with the ability to recapture that distinctive sound that characterizes the beat and blues of the beach.

Floyd? He's the thread that traces back to the beginning. With his protege, Gregg Allman, in the song "Goin' Back to Daytona", he has got it right - the beat, the sound, the rawness-then-smoothness which makes beach blues what it is. You have to hear it, you have to feel it. It isn't something you put down on paper. It comes fiom the gut, from the heart.

It was written in real life on the salt air in the beach town, with the passion and rawness of a mean Nor'easter, to the sweat and heat of summer rock, to the bitter coldness of blues and rejection. It is music. It is life. And these guys - Greenlee, Floyd, Gregg, Dickey Betts, Noble Watts, Warren King, Ace Moreland and Byrd Foster, got it right.

Amen! 
They got it right! Enjoy and remember. This is a once-in-forever record album

~Tom Tucker

Floyd Miles........................... Vocals
Warren King.............................Guitar
Ace Moreland........................... Guitar
Bob Greenlee....................................Bass
Ronnie "Byrd" Foster..............................Drums
Dwight Champagne..........................Organ and Piano
Bill Samuel...........................Tenor and Baritone Sax
Bruce Staelens...........................Trumpet
Gregg Allman..........................Vocals and Hammond Organ
Dickey Betts........................... Lead Guitar

TOP