Knight, Gladys (1944-…), ranks among the greatest singers in the history of American rhythm and blues music. She led a vocal group called Gladys Knight and the Pips. The basic group consisted of her brother Merald Knight and her cousins William Guest and Edward Patten. The three men backed Knight, who sang in a powerful soul music style that reflected her background as a gospel singer. From the mid-1960’s through the 1970’s, Gladys Knight and the Pips was one of the most popular groups in pop music.
Knight was born on May 28, 1944, in Atlanta, Georgia. As a child, she sang in church and gospel choirs. She formed her vocal group in 1953. They made a number of recordings for the next 15 years, the only major hit being “Every Beat of My Heart” (1961). Gladys Knight and the Pips finally achieved sustained popularity after they signed with Motown Records in 1965 and recorded “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1967). The group then made a series of popular rhythm and blues records, notably “It Should Have Been Me” (1968), “Friendship Train” (1969), and “The Nitty Gritty” (1969).
In the 1970’s, Knight shifted to a more balladic style, recording such hits as “If I Were Your Woman” (1970), “Make Me the Woman That You Go Home To” (1971), and “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” (1972). The group moved from Motown to the Buddah record label in 1973 and made several more successful records, especially “Midnight Train to Georgia” (1973), “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” (1973), “The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” (1974), “On and On” (1974), and “The Way We Were/Try to Remember” (1974).
Due to a dispute between record companies, Gladys Knight and the Pips could not record together from 1978 to 1980, when the four were reunited. After a slow start, the group regained some of its former popularity with such recordings as “Save the Overtime (for Me)” (1983) and “Love Overboard” (1987). Gladys Knight and the Pips were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Knight wrote an autobiography, Between Each Line of Pain and Glory: My Life Story (1997). She won the 2002 Grammy Award for best traditional rhythm and blues album for At Last. Knight became a Kennedy Center honoree in 2022. The Kennedy Center Honors are awarded for contributions to American culture through the performing arts.
