There’s a Little Bit of My Hometown in Pink Floyd’s Name

Pink Floyd got its name from two early blues musicians, including one born in my hometown of Laurens, South Carolina.

Pink Floyd got their name from two early blues musicians: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Back in the 1960s, when the band was still figuring things out and going by names like The Tea Set, they ran into a problem. Another band had the same name as them at one of their gigs. To avoid confusion, Syd Barrett quickly came up with something new on the spot. He looked at two records in his collection and took the first names of the artists: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. That’s how The Pink Floyd Sound was born. Eventually, they dropped “The” and “Sound,” and it became just Pink Floyd.

Pinkney “Pink” Anderson was born on February 12, 1900, in Laurens, South Carolina, which is my hometown. He played Piedmont blues and got his start performing in traveling medicine shows as a teenager, helping draw crowds while someone pitched miracle cures. He had a smooth, laid-back fingerpicking guitar style and sang songs that were often funny or told stories. He didn’t become a household name, but during the blues revival in the 1960s, he recorded a few albums like Carolina Bluesman, and his son, Little Pink Anderson, followed in his footsteps.

Floyd Council was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1911. He is probably best known for playing with Blind Boy Fuller on some classic blues recordings from the 1930s. Like Anderson, he had that Piedmont fingerpicking style that was clean and rhythmic. He only recorded a few songs under his own name, but people who know the blues respect the contributions he made to the music coming out of the Carolinas at the time.

While neither of them achieved wide mainstream fame, both were respected in the blues world, and their names live on thanks to a last-minute decision by a young Syd Barrett, one that ended up naming one of the most iconic bands in rock history.

Laurens, South Carolina, where Pinkney “Pink” Anderson was born, sits in historic Laurens County, established in 1785 and named after Revolutionary War hero Henry Laurens. The county is home to Musgrove Mill State Historic Site, the location of a key Revolutionary battle in 1780. In the 1820s, future U.S. President Andrew Johnson worked as a tailor in downtown Laurens for about a year. The area has a long and layered history that ties a small Southern town to some unexpected corners of American culture.