Back-Up Tracks: Gladys Knight
While most careers in the music industry hinge on fly-by-night success, many living legacies stay on the road, keeping their reputations in varying states of repair. In Back-Up Tracks, The A.V. Club looks past those primary hits and considers more recent work on its own merit to see how these artists have evolved over the decades and what they bring to the stage today. In this installment, we weigh the back catalog and contemporary recordings of "Empress Of Soul" Gladys Knight, who plays Horseshoe Hammond Casino on Saturday.
Everybody knows: Gladys Knight's early hits with The Pips epitomize the wonders and contradictions of Motown: The session men played with both polish and eccentricity, while harmonies beamed shamelessly over rugged, funky rhythms. Marvin Gaye may have poured more desperation into his version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," but Knight strutted through the song like a prosecutor in top form.
Shelf life: This is the stuff they make the shelves out of.
Alternate classics: Either a song that begins with nasty wah-wah-squawking guitar has no right to be about friendship, or a song called "Friendship Train" has no right to be as badass as this 1969 hit. "This train stands for love, love, love," and those congas make you smell the engineer's sweat. Even so, it's as if farewells are her specialty: "Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)," the title track of her final 1973 Motown album, slows all the conflict and regret of "Grapevine" into an unmistakably fond torch song.
Shelf life: Consistency among hits keeps the moths at bay.
Turning points: With 1978's Miss Gladys Knight, Gladys took her first official step away from The Pips and into a production style that wouldn't sound out of place wafting over a department-store perfume counter. The LP featured one disco number ("It's A Better Than Good Time") and otherwise took a slow-mo march through ballads like "With You In Mind." The slight adult-contemporary blandness doesn't seep into her voice: Knight still commands without talking down. The pipes open up for one anguished bellow around 1:50, as if to spotlight how fully she buoys up a tune without showing off the other 99 percent of the time. Her 1980 album with The Pips, About Love, managed to hint at the funkier days of old, through still in soft-focus, thanks to songs like "Landlord."
Shelf life: The shelves might sag under all the LPs and countless compilations with Knight's name on them, yet she's never managed to really embarrass herself.
Recently: Knight always felt that the Motown machine shorted her and the Pips. Rather than beg back toward those glory days, she's enjoyed her freedom, so much so that she's branched out into stuff that really isn't soul at all. Her restrained phrasing on the 2006 standards album Before Me (for jazz label Verve) might take a little adjustment for Motown fans. That said, her voice doesn't float aloof above those muted trumpets, easy-swingin' drums, and vibraphone: For all her dignified smoothness, Knight sounds like she's singing at close range. She lets people hear her breaths and gently, and playfully nudges the melodies of "Stormy Weather" out of the usual jazz-vocal comfort zone.
Shelf life: Keep it around for some admittedly mellow company.
Other assets: Chicken and waffles restaurants
Curio from the past: In this '70s-era performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" Knight and The Pips inadvertently pay fashion-tribute to The Legend Of Zelda.
State of the legacy: The Empress can still converse with the common listener while carrying a lavish tune, so don't expect a stale relics-parade here.
