Gladys Maria Knight (born May 28, 1944), known as the “Empress of Soul”, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and author. A seven-time Grammy Award-winner, Knight is known for the hits she recorded during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with her group Gladys Knight & the Pips, which also included her brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins William Guest and Edward Patten.
Her Official website is gladysknight.com. There you can listen all her songs via ITunes,YouTube and Spotify. It also has gallery of her images from her live performances.
Gladys Knight has been with the Pips for over forty years, but from the start she sang with the wisdom of a woman who has seen it all. From doo-wop to Motown to Seventies soul ballads, the quality of their work is unimpeachable.
Although they are best known for their great recordings at Motown in the late 1960s and the ballad hits they scored in the early ‘70s, Gladys Knight and the Pips, in fact, have had a career that encompasses the majority of rock history. Indeed, Knight is one of the few Hall of Famers who have continued to make hits from the ‘60s until the present day.
The key to this success is Gladys Knight’s voice, one of the more remarkable instruments of the rock, soul and R&B eras. A perfect blend of grace and grit has allowed her to record such masterpieces of balladry as “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),” “If I Were Your Woman,” “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “Every Beat of My Heart” while also making such funky dance numbers as the original “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “The Nitty Gritty,” “Friendship Train,” “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” and “Love Overboard.”
Knight has recorded two number-one Billboard Hot 100 singles (“Midnight Train to Georgia” and “That’s What Friends Are For”), eleven number-one R&B singles, and six number-one R&B albums. She has won seven Grammy Awards (four as a solo artist and three with the Pips) and is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Vocal Group Hall of Fame along with The Pips. Two of her songs (“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Midnight Train to Georgia”) were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic and significant” value. She also recorded the theme song for the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Knight among the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
In 1976, Knight made her acting debut as the lead in the film Pipe Dreams for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. In 2003, she had a small role in the movie Hollywood Homicide, which starred Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. In 2009, Knight was featured in Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself, the film version of a play he had dramatized, and performed her song “The Need To Be” from the 1974 album I Feel a Song.
Grammy winner Gladys Knight is set to perform the national anthem in person at the March 7 NBA All-Star Game.
