Gladys Knight & The Pips

Gladys Knight & the Pips started out in Atlanta as just the Pips, a family affair named for a cousin's nickname: Gladys, her brother Merald "Bubba" Knight, sister Brenda Knight and cousins Eleanor and William Guest. They worked the talent-show circuit, signed with Brunswick in 1957 and cut a couple of singles that went nowhere. By 1959 Brenda and Eleanor were out and cousin Edward Patten and Langston George were in, and "Every Beat of My Heart" finally broke them, so thoroughly that it came out on three different labels. In 1961 the name became Gladys Knight & the Pips.

Motown signed them in 1966, and in 1967 they cut the first hit version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", Gladys wailing over a churning, gospel-hot groove while the Pips punched in behind her. The run that followed was pure class, from "Nitty Gritty" and "Friendship Train" to "If I Were Your Woman", capped by "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)", a Grammy winner that aches like a long goodbye in a dark kitchen.

In 1973 they jumped to Buddah and hit even bigger. "Midnight Train to Georgia" went to number one and won another Grammy, Gladys's voice rich as molasses and the Pips gliding along behind her like the train itself. They made the Claudine soundtrack with Curtis Mayfield in 1974, moved to Columbia in 1980, and scored yet another Grammy with "Love Overboard" before calling it a day in 1989. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 1996.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.