Glady Knight: Still serving up satisfying soul

For all of her success, first with the Pips and then as a solo artist, Gladys Knight has maintained a genuine warmth unlike so many of her contemporaries.

five to treasure

Many gems stud Gladys Knight’s extensive discography – but here are her most essential recordings.

• “Neither One of Us” (1973) This was the last LP Knight and the Pips recorded for Motown after seven years with the company, and it’s perhaps the best set the group released during its tenure there. The album boasts two classics, the Grammy-winning title track and the funk-folk jam “Daddy Could Swear, I Declare.”
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• “Imagination” (1973) The group exited Motown on a high note and entered its most commercially successful period with Buddah Records the same year. The debut for the New York label yielded the quartet’s signature smash, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and three other hits: “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” “Where Peaceful Waters Flow” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.” A masterstroke of sophisticated soul, “Imagination” is the quartet’s biggest-selling album.
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• “Claudine” (1974) Knight and the Pips, one of the hottest pop groups in the early ’70s, collaborated with one of the era’s most sought-after producers, the illustrious Curtis Mayfield. The result was this stunning movie soundtrack. Featuring the hit “On and On” and the heart-melting “The Makings of You,” “Claudine” is an overlooked masterpiece.
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• “About Love” (1980) The group entered the ’80s with this smart and classy effort, written and produced by Ashford & Simpson. The album contains two cosmopolitan soul favorites, “Landlord” and “Taste of Bitter Love,” plus the testifying “Still Such a Thing.”
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• “Gold” (2006) This is perhaps the best compilation on the market (and there are many). This two-disc set chronicles the group’s doo-wop years in the early ’60s up to its last hit, 1988’s Grammy-winning “Love Overboard.” “Gold” also features Knight’s solo hits, including the James Bond theme “License to Kill.”

It doesn’t matter what she sings, be it Motown or Gershwin – Gladys Knight smothers it with an aural Southern gravy.
Her roots in the Baptist church in her native Georgia have long powered her music. The arrangements behind her often straddle the fence between treacly pop and hard-core soul. The way she manipulates the gritty and honeyed tones of her rich contralto evokes a warmth found only below the Mason-Dixon line.
Knight headlines the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts in Virginia Beach on Friday. The 67-year-old artist has been performing for more than 50 years. With the Pips from 1961 to 1988, she scored dozens of era-defining hits. The spectrum spans the doo-wop sweetness of “Every Beat of My Heart” to the sleek ’80s funk of “Love Overboard.”

She has navigated numerous trends in pop and R&B and stayed relevant even as full-bodied churchy singing fell out of style. In the ’90s, she launched a solo career, which she’d also tentatively done back in the late ’70s. Mary J. Blige had set a new standard with her female-thug take on soul, but Knight still sold gold with 1994’s “Just for You.”

The album brimmed with the kind of songs she does best: classy ballads promising unwavering devotion and heartbreak numbers offering transcendence and healing.

Yet for all of her success – seven Grammys, a string of ’60s and ’70s smashes, and a 1996 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction with the Pips – Gladys Knight isn’t as widely celebrated as some of her peers.

Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Diana Ross, legends who racked up genre-changing hits at the same time as Knight, became grand icons. Drag shows around the world feature female impersonators performing signature tunes by those divas. Mainstream critics have long lauded their incandescent musical gifts. And the praise is well-deserved.

But Knight’s middle-class baby boomer fan base is different. It’s reflective of her down-home yet polished approach.
Knight has never come off as the glittery unapproachable diva (Ross); the gaudy and moody queen (Franklin); or the aloof sophisticate (Warwick). She still flashes a wide and radiant smile on album covers and in promo shots.

Back in the day, her gowns were tasteful and form-fitting, as the Pips, wearing sharp suits, moved in lockstep beside her. She’s direct in interviews but always warm and gracious. Gladys Knight is perhaps the last “lady” in urban pop.

Without a trace of grandiosity, she delivers songs of faith and unrequited love through a kaleidoscope of emotions. Anger and frustration ignite “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination.” But a soul-rocking sense of spiritual release gives wings to “I Feel a Song in My Heart” and “If I Were Your Woman.”

Knight’s last album, 2006’s “Before Me,” is a collection of standards. It was a predictable move. Several of her aging baby-boomer peers have released albums interpreting the Great American Songbook. On “Before Me,” the grit of her soul classics gives way to a refreshingly smooth and heartfelt approach to jazz and pop evergreens. Knight pours her savory vocal gravy all over Ellington and the Gershwins.

And the results, as always, are filling and satisfying.