Another 1967 single, " I Heard It Through the Grapevine", provided a career-making breakthrough. The group's third Motown single was the Top 40 hit " Everybody Needs Love", released in 1967. In that same year, Motown released the various artists tribute album In Loving Memory, which included two tracks from Gladys Knight & the Pips, " Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and " How Great Thou Art". While at Motown in 1968, Gladys Knight was the first person to suggest that Berry Gordy sign an up-and-coming act from Gary, Indiana called The Jackson Five. In spite of another hit with 1964's " Giving Up" (later covered by Donny Hathaway and The Ad Libs), Knight and the Pips did not achieve widespread success until 1966, after signing to Motown Records. Gladys Knight & the Pips' Motown long-playing debut, Everybody Needs Love (1967), which includes their hit single " I Heard It Through the Grapevine".=Gladys Knight & The Pips join Motown Records = Choreographer Cholly Atkins designed "fast-stepping" dance routines that became a signature of the Pips' stage presentation. The group developed a reputation for exciting and polished live performances that enabled them to work even without the benefit of best-selling records. Husband Newman served as the group's musical director. The Pips toured on their own for two years, until Knight returned to the act in 1964 in order to support her family. Her second child Kenya Maria Newman was born in November the following year. Typically, most of the act's recordings featured Knight's contralto on lead vocals and the three male members of the group, usually referred to as "The Pips" by themselves, providing characteristic background vocals.Īfter a second Fury hit, "Letter Full of Tears", in 1962, Knight quit the group to start a family with husband James Newman, giving birth to James Gaston Newman III in August of that year. Shortly afterwards, Langston George left the group, and the remaining members continued as a quartet, now billed as Gladys Knight & the Pips. The Pips recorded a second version of "Every Beat" with Bobby Robinson as the producer, and the song became a #1 R&B and #6 pop hit. The group had recorded the song for a friend in Atlanta, who promptly sold the master to Vee-Jay Records and cut the group out of the record's profits. The Pips scored their first hit in 1961 with " Every Beat of My Heart", a cover of a Hank Ballard & The Midnighters song written by Johnny Otis. The Pips began to perform and tour, eventually replacing Brenda Knight and Eleanor Guest with Langston George in 1959 and Edward Patten in 1963. The following year, she, her brother Bubba, sister Brenda, and their cousins William and Eleanor Guest started a singing group called "The Pips" (named after another cousin, James "Pip" Woods). At the age of seven in 1952, she won Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour television show contest. Gladys Knight was born in 1944 in Atlanta, Georgia. 1.2 Taking the "Midnight Train" to Buddah Records.1.1 Gladys Knight & The Pips join Motown Records.
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