Soul · R&B · Pop
The Empress of Soul — a voice of velvet and fire, carried by the smoothest backup singers in the business.
The biography
Gladys Maria Knight was born on May 28, 1944, in Atlanta, Georgia, and began singing in church as a small child — winning Ted Mack’s televised Amateur Hour at age seven. In 1953 she formed a family harmony group with her brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins Edward Patten and William Guest. They called themselves the Pips, and the blend they struck — gospel warmth, pop polish, and Gladys’s powerhouse lead — would carry them for three decades.
After years of touring, Gladys Knight & the Pips signed with Motown in 1966. Their gospel-trained harmonies gave the label some of its grittiest soul: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” in 1967 (their version hit first, before Marvin Gaye’s), the slow-burning “If I Were Your Woman” in 1970, and the aching farewell “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” in 1973. Gladys’s voice could testify and soothe in the same breath — the quality that earned her the nickname the Empress of Soul.
Leaving Motown for Buddah Records in 1973, the group reached its peak. “Midnight Train to Georgia” — Jim Weatherly’s song about a dreamer riding home — hit number one on the pop chart and won a Grammy; “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” followed it up the charts. Gladys Knight later built a celebrated solo career, and in 1996 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — family harmony, at last, given its proper place in history.
