 Gladys Knight - One of the great soul singers, Gladys Knight
was a performer from her childhood years, forming the Pips with her brother
Merald and a couple cousins. They made the Top Ten in 1961 with the heavily doo
wop-influenced "Every Beat of My Heart," and recorded some fine, nowadays
overlooked, pop-soul sides for the Fury and Maxx labels in the early and
mid-'60s, sometimes under the direction of songwriter Van McCoy. A couple
singles from this period, "Letter Full of Tears" and "Giving Up," made the Top
40, but Gladys Knight didn't hit her commercial stride until she moved to Motown
in 1966. Steeped in the gospel tradition, like so many soul singers, Gladys
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 mid-tempo soul ("It Should Have Been Me" and
"The End of Our Road, ") and smooth ballads like "If I Were Your Woman." In
1973, Gladys Knight had her biggest Motown hit with "Neither One of Us," which
made number two; shortly afterwards, she and the Pips left Motown for Buddah.
The group were briefly superstars in 1973-74, reeling off the smashes "Midnight
Train to Georgia" (their only number one), "I've Got to Use My Imagination," and
"Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me." This ranked as some of their best
material, but Gladys Knight soon moved toward an easy listening, adult
contemporary direction, one that she's maintained to this day. Now performing
separately from the Pips (who have retired), her days as a high-charting star
ended after the mid-'70s, although Gladys Knight remains fairly popular, and
maintained an active recording career into the new millennium.
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