The great ones endure, and Atlanta-born Gladys Knight has long been one of the greatest. Very few singers over the last fifty years have matched her unassailable artistry.
Singing professionally since the age of four, her first big break came at the age of seven when she won the Grand Prize on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. “Coming up, I was an artist who wanted to watch, listen and learn,” she states. “We had such wonderful people to look up to. They gave their all with love and respect for what they did in spite of society's shortcomings at that time. They were willing to plow on through just to get to the stage and give you what was inside of them.”
The following year, she, along with her brother Bubba, her sister Brenda, and her cousins William and Elinor Guest, formed The Pips. “When the Pips and I first started singing, we adopted our principles and philosophies at their hands. And, because I started so young, I had the chance to be on the tail-end of the lifestyle that they lived. For example, I witnessed segregation for the first time when I left home with the Pips. We weren't allowed to stay in hotels. We had to do rooming houses. But I am so grateful for the blessing of being born during that time to appreciate the richness of character and spirit it instilled.”
Gladys had a powerful yet quite different meeting with the great Dinah Washington. “When the Pips and I got started in the ’50s, we won a talent show in Atlanta and became an immediate local hit. When Dinah came to town, she played the Club Casino which asked us to be on the show. When we went to rehearsal that day, there she sat. I heard her before I saw her with that big booming voice . . . and she was ‘gettin' somebody told!’ I said, ‘Who is that lady?’ They said Dinah Washington and I went, ‘Oooo!!’ I was afraid of that woman! But we were all in awe. We did our show then sat at our little table to watch her perform. It was electric!”
In 1959, Brenda and Elinor left the group, replaced by cousin Edward Patten and friend Langston George. The group was renamed Gladys Knight and the Pips, and following Langston's departure in 1962, the classic line-up was in place. The Pips scored their first R&B chart-topper, “Every Beat of My Heart”, in the spring of 1961.
With Gladys singing lead and the Pips providing lush harmonies and graceful choreography, the group went on to achieve icon status, having recorded some of the most memorable songs of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. They recorded some fine, nowadays overlooked pop-soul sides for the Fury and Maxx labels in the early and mid-'60s. A couple singles from this period, "Letter Full of Tears" and "Giving Up," made the Top 40, but Knight didn't hit her commercial stride until she moved to Motown in 1966.
Steeped in the gospel tradition, like so many soul singers, Knight & the Pips developed into one of Motown's most dependable acts, although they never quite scaled the commercial or artistic heights of fellow stars on the label like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations. With Norman Whitfield providing the production and much of the songwriting, the Pips fit into the mainstream of Motown's machine well, scoring big hits with some rabble-rousers (like "Friendship Train" and the original version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"), mainstream midtempo soul ("It Should Have Been Me" and "The End of Our Road"), and smooth ballads like "If I Were Your Woman."
Back in 1974, Gladys Knight — a woman in possession of one of the most instantly recognizable and loved voices in popular music — stepped away from her group The Pips for a solo medley of “Try to Remember/The Way We Were” with orchestra. This version, recorded live at the Pine Knob Theatre in Detroit for the tellingly-titled album “I Feel a Song”, is famous for many reasons, not the least of which is Knight’s spoken preamble that finds her musing on nostalgia and ”the good old days.” “Oh, why does it seem that the past is always better?” she queried that evening.
Label switches through the ’70s and ’80s took Gladys Knight & The Pips to Buddah, Columbia, and MCA Records while they racked up top concert engagements, their own television variety show, three Grammy awards and a plethora of other accolades.
All the while, Gladys Knight herself branched into several avenues of entertainment including a starring role in the film Pipe Dreams and a co-starring role in the TV series Charlie & Co. with comedian Flip Wilson. She won another Grammy as a participant on the poignant Dionne Warwick & Friends’ (with Stevie Wonder and Elton John) “That’s What Friends Are For”. She recorded her first solo album, Miss Gladys Knight: One and Only, in 1978 which was not followed up until 1989 when she kicked off a solo career in earnest, singing the soul-shattering theme from the James Bond film License to Kill, leading to the acclaimed albums Good Woman (1991), Just for You (1994), and Next Time (1995). At Last (2001) won her another Grammy award, for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance and the gospel album One Voice (2005) with her Saints Unified Voices choir also won a Grammy for Best Gospel Choir/Chorus Album.
Gladys Knight has been a consistently popular recording and concert attraction, recent performances including an acclaimed tour with fellow Motown veteran Smokey Robinson as well as a groundbreaking four-year stand at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Says the singer of her career today, "I love this industry because it's ever-changing. Music speaks to people's spirits; wherever the social consciousness is, that's where music is going to be." And this sums up the true meaning of soul music. As said earlier, Gladys Knight’ is truly one of the greatest soul music artists of our time.
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