Knock on Wood

This was Eddie Floyd's biggest hit. He wrote the song with Stax Records guitarist Steve Cropper in the Lorraine Motel, which is where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Working late at night, they came up with the famous line, "It's like thunder, lightning, the way you love me is frightening" when Floyd told Cropper a story about how he and his brother would ride out the storms in Alabama. "In Alabama, man, there's like thunder and lightning," he told Cropper. "We'd hide under the bed because we'd be frightened of the thunder and lightning." Cropper liked this phrase and came up with the famous line.

The saying "Knock On Wood" is used to express gratitude for good fortune while humbly acknowledging that it might not continue: "My back has been feeling better ever since I gave up spearfishing... knock on wood." This is often accompanied by the speaker actually tapping on any nearby (and preferably wooden) surface. In the song, Eddie Floyd is knocking on wood because he's so lucky to have found the girl of his dreams. Steve Cropper recalled to Mojo magazine: "We were trying to write a song about superstitions, and after we'd exhausted about every superstition known to man at that time, from cats to umbrellas, you name it, we said, what do people do for good luck? And Ed tapped on the chair and said, 'knock on wood, there it is.' So basically the whole theme of the song changed, and we started to sing about, I'd better knock on wood for good luck, that I can keep this girl that I got, because she's the greatest - and that's what it was about."

This song has one of the most effective pauses in music history: After Floyd sings, "I better knock," there's some space before drummer Al Jackson comes in with with his drumbeats and Floyd completes the line with "on wood." This section wasn't planned - Jackson came up with the idea of putting the pause in and simulating the sound of knocking on a door to break up the line. This little flourish made the song very memorable.