8/2/2023 0 Comments Gladys knight young“She has a soothing, smooth, crazy wonderful voice. And while the group, born at Bubba’s 10th birthday party in 1952, was a family affair from the start, the name being called first always belonged to Gladys. She had the voice, the guys had the moves, and they all looked good while doing it. “When they call your name like that, it really lifts you up,” says the singer, who knows a little something about her name being called.įor more than 40 years, Knight performed with her big brother, Merald “Bubba” Knight Jr., and cousins William Guest and Edward Patten as Gladys Knight & the Pips - a rare female lead crooning in front of all-male backups. While none of this is news to Knight, it still shocks her. “You hear her delivery and you wish that you could communicate with as much honest and genuine emotion as she does.” “If you have the desire to sing and you love R&B, she’s like a textbook you learn from,” Carey said. “Gladys can sang.” At Knight’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Mariah Carey, another voice of a generation, described her as a “singer’s singer.” “We all know the difference between singing and being able to sang,” Oprah Winfrey said while lauding Knight at an awards ceremony in 1992. From the 1960s onward, her voice poured the foundation of the era’s sound - “Every Beat of My Heart,” “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “Neither One of Us” and more. “Me? Who you talking about? Me?” Knight, 78, asks with genuine awe while contemplating her Kennedy Center Honors recognition for a career that spans seven decades and seven times as many hits. She’s just everything.”īecause of that effortless energy and the fact that Knight has been expertly weaving together harmonies since she was 4, the impact of her talent - a gift she says comes from “Him” while pointing to the ceiling of this fancy hotel restaurant not far from her home in North Carolina - can still catch her off guard. “She’s one of the best entertainers out there and with one of the best hearts. “It was always love,” LaBelle says of Knight. The moment, both surreal and live-streamed in your living room, was so very Gladys. As the Atlanta native peppers her sentences with y’all and fussin’, she makes it easy to forget that she is the prototype.Īnd did you catch her Verzuz song catalogue “battle” in 2020 with fellow diva Patti LaBelle? The pair sat next to one another kiki-ing like the real besties they are and delivered full-throttle hits like it was nothing. Wrapped in a magenta turtleneck, she tells the handsome waiter pouring her iced tea that he “should be in the movies” before launching into a humble story about how she discovered Michael Jackson. Her sound is so pure, her steps so graceful, her smile so disarming that the vocal powerhouse’s sheer presence seems at once natural and divine. It is much too easy to take Gladys Knight for granted. From a Washington Post story by Helena Andrews-Dyer about the Kennedy Center Honors headlined “Gladys Knight has always been a singer’s singer”:
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