Gladys Knight & The Pips – The Best Of (1976)

Gladys Knight & the Pips were an American R&B/soul/funk family music group from Atlanta, Georgia, that remained active on the music charts and performing circuit for over three decades starting from the early 1950s.

Starting out as simply The Pips in 1952, derived from a cousin’s nickname, the founding members were Gladys Knight, brother Merald “Bubba” Knight, sister Brenda Knight and cousins Eleanor Guest and William Guest. After a couple of years performing in talent shows, the group signed with Brunswick Records in 1957, recording a couple of singles that failed to chart. Brenda Knight and Eleanor Guest eventually left the group and were replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten, and a non-relative, Langston George in 1959. This lineup produced the group’s first hit single, “Every Beat of My Heart”. After the single was released on three different labels, they changed their name to Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1961. Langston George left the same year and Gladys Knight left in 1962 to start a family with musician Jimmy Newman. Knight rejoined in 1964 and this lineup continued until the group’s disbandment in 1989.

The group reached commercial success after signing with Motown Records in 1966. After a year and a half, the group recorded the first hit single version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” in 1967, which led to several hit singles for Motown’s Soul Records label, including “Nitty Gritty”, “Friendship Train”, “If I Were Your Woman”, “I Don’t Want to Do Wrong” and the Grammy-winning “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)”, before leaving the label for Buddah Records in 1973. At Buddah, they recorded the hits “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”, “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination”, “I Feel a Song (In My Heart)” and their Grammy-winning and number-one hit single, “Midnight Train to Georgia”. In 1974, they recorded the soundtrack to the successful film Claudine with producer Curtis Mayfield, which included the songs “On and On”, “The Makings of You” and “Make Yours a Happy Home”. Contractual difficulties with their labels forced the group to record side projects from 1977 until 1980 when they signed with Columbia Records. Later hits included “Landlord”, “Save the Overtime (For Me)” and the Grammy-winning single “Love Overboard”. In 1989, the group disbanded with the Pips retiring and Knight embarking on a successful solo career.

Gladys Knight & the Pips are multiple Grammy and American Music Award winners and are inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1996 and 2001 respectively. (wikipedia)

I guess this is their first “Best Of ” compilation. Their were of course an important part in the history of Soul music.

Personnel:
vocals:
William Guest – Gladys Knight – Merald “Bubba” Knight – Edward Patten
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many, many studio musicians

Tracklist:
01. Make Yours A Happy Home (Mayfield) 4.40
02. Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me (Weatherly) 3.50
03. I Feel A Song (In My Heart) (Camillo/Sawyer) 3.23
04. The Going Ups And The Coming Downs (Weatherly) 3.38
05. Midnight Train To Georgia (Weatherly) 4.42
06. On And On (Mayfield) 4.20
07. Where Peaceful Waters Flow (Weatherly) 4.30
08. I’ve Got To Use My Imagination (Goffin/Goldberg) 3.30
09. I Can See Clearly Now (Nash) 4.25
10. Try To Remember / The Way We Were (Schmidt/Hamlisch/A.Bergman/M.Bergman/ Jones) 4.35

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The now deleted website:

Ray Charles – Genius & Friends (2005)

Atlantic/Rhino’s 2005 Genius & Friends is the end result of a project Ray Charles initiated a few months before his death in June 2004. According to James Austin’s liner notes, Charles called Austin in December of 2003, asking if he could find the masters to an unreleased duets record Ray recorded in 1997 and 1998. Austin found the tapes, but Charles was too sick to work on them, so after his passing — and after his final studio album, the duets record Genius Loves Company, became a number one hit in August of 2004 — Atlantic/Rhino decided to finish off the project, bringing in producer Phil Ramone to oversee the completion of the album. This included bringing in singers to record their parts, since apart from two tracks — a 1994 duet with Diana Ross on “Big Bad Love” and a live 1991 version of “Busted” with Willie Nelson (taken from the television special Ray Charles: 50 Years in Music) — these are all studio constructions, with vocalists duetting with a previously recorded Ray. While not quite the monstrosity it could have been — posthumous duets albums like this always bear an unsettling ghoulish undertow — Genius & Friends is also not a particularly good album either. This isn’t because the pairings are ill conceived — apart from the woefully outmatched American Idol winner Ruben Studdard on “Imagine” (which boasts perhaps Ray’s best vocal performance on this record), there’s nobody here who doesn’t hold his or her own, and Ramone has skillfully edited the new recordings with the existing tapes so it sounds like they were recorded at the same time, even if it rarely sounds as if the vocalists were in the same room together. Rather, the problem is that the productions are caught halfway between ’90s adult contemporary and modern neo-soul, sounding too slick and polished to really be memorable. It’s pleasant enough — and it’s top-loaded, too, with the duets with Angie Stone, Chris Isaak, and Mary J. Blige being among the best cuts — but it’s not as relaxed or appealing as Genius Loves Company, which had the feeling of being a real duets album. This feels like what it is — a professional studio creation. Not a terrible thing per se, but not something that makes for a good album, either.( by Stepen Thomas Erlewine)

Tracklist:
01. Angie Stone:  All I Want to Do (McKinney/Walden) 4.00
02. Chris Isaak: You Are My Sunshine (Davis/Mitchell) 3.48
03. Mary J. Blige: It All Goes by So Fast (Hirsch/Levy) 5.07
04. Gladys Knight: You Were There (unknown) 3.41
05. The Harlem Gospel Singers / Ruben Studdard: Imagine (Lennon) 3.41
06. Leela James: Compared to What (McDaniels) 3.42
07. Diana Ross: Big Bad Love (Sample/Stephanie Tyrell/Steve Tyrell) 3.42
08. Idina Menzel: I Will Be There (Dakota/Walden) 4.43
09. George Michael: Blame It On The Sun (Wonder/Wright) 4.46
10. John Legend: Touch (McKinney/Walden) 4.40
11. Patti LaBelle / The Andraé Crouch Singers: Shout (Hilden/Walden) 5.10
12. Laura Pausini: Surrender To Love (unknown) 4.13
13. Willie Nelson: Busted (Howard) 2.32
14. Alicia Keys: America the Beautiful (Bates/Ward) 2.58

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