Gladys Knight & The Pips

Led by the “Empress of Soul” herself, the R&B family group Gladys Knight & The Pips scored more than two dozen Top 10 R&B hits over the course of their career and topped the pop charts with their 1973 opus “Midnight Train to Georgia”. • Born in Atlanta, Gladys Knight showed promise from an early age. She won the nationally televised Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour competition in 1952, when she was just seven. • Gladys, her siblings Bubba and Brenda, and their cousins Eleanor and William Guest began performing together at Bubba’s 10th birthday party in 1952. (They’d previously sung together in church.) Five years later, they issued their debut single, “Whistle My Love”. • After a few personnel changes, the Pips topped Billboard’s R&B chart with 1961’s “Every Beat of My Heart”. • The Pips made their Motown Records debut with Everybody Needs Love in 1967. The single “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” topped the R&B charts and reached No. 2 on pop. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018. • The group returned to the pop Top 10 with “If I Were Your Woman” in 1970. • “Midnight Train to Georgia”, off 1973’s Imagination, reached No. 1 on the pop and R&B charts and earned the group a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus. • Knight joined Elton John and Stevie Wonder on Dionne Warwick’s all-star 1985 version of “That’s What Friends Are For”. The fundraiser for AIDS research topped the Billboard Hot 100. • In 1989, two years after the group’s gold-certified album All Our Love, Gladys left to pursue a solo career. • The group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1996 and 2001, respectively.