Gladys Knight is a singer from the United States who has won seven Grammy Awards. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, she had hits with her family band, The Pips. These songs helped her become famous.
With Sir Elton John, Dionne Warwick, and Stevie Wonder, she made the hit singles “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “That’s What Friends Are For.” She also made eleven other top R&B singles and six top R&B albums.
Knight and The Pips were both put into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. She also sang the music for the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, which came out in 1989.
In October 2009, she began her last tour of the UK. Dionne Warwick was a special guest, and Tito Jackson was her opening act.
What’s wrong with Gladys Knight? Is she sick?
Gladys Knight, a famous soul singer, said that she has pancreatic cancer. This is the same disease that killed her friend and fellow soul icon Aretha Franklin.
But the singer’s rep denied the report a few hours after she talked about her health. “Gladys doesn’t have pancreatic cancer,” Jay Schwartz, who works for Knight, said later. “She’s fine!”
According to WDIV, a local TV station in Detroit, Michigan, Knight told people at the Queen of Soul’s service at Greater Grace Temple that he had “the same illness” as Franklin.
In a statement to Rolling Stone sent by Schwartz, Knight made clear what had gone wrong. She wanted to make it clear that she and Aretha had talked about having cancer and that Gladys had stage 1 breast cancer and Aretha had pancreatic cancer.
As of right now, she seems to be in good spirits and is still actively making music at the age of 78.
Where is Gladys Knight at this time?
Gladys Knight was in New York City today for the 2022 U.S. Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The crowd cheered loudly when she walked on stage.
Knight is currently on tour in one country, and he has eight more shows coming up. On August 14, 2022, she put on a show at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk.
The next stop on her tour is the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton on September 17.
After that, she will perform at Rollins Center Bally’s Dover in Dover, DE, United States. On December 17, 2022, her last show of 2022 will be at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California.
Gladys Knight is a singer who has won seven Grammy Awards
Celebritynetworth.com says that as of September 2022, American singer and actor Gladys Knight has a net worth of $28 million.
In 1952, when she was eight years old, she won a contest on Ted Mack’s TV show The Original Amateur Hour. This brought her to the public’s attention.
Soon after, Knight, her brother, Brenda, and their cousins Eleanor and William Guest, along with Gladys’ mother Mrs. Elizabeth’s encouragement, form a group and call themselves “The Pips.”
In 1955, the group started going to talent shows in Atlanta, where they won every contest they entered.
After Brunswick dropped the group in 1959, Eleanor Guest and Brenda Knight left to start families. Langston George, a friend, and Edward Patten, another cousin, took their places.
Gladys decided to go out on her own in 1987, and she and the Pips recorded their last album together, All Our Love, for MC records (1987).
She made the Mormon-themed choir Saints Unified Voices and led it. SUV has a CD called One Voice that won a Grammy Award and is sometimes played at LDS church fairs.
Gladys, who was born in Atlanta, started acting in the movie Pipe Dreams in 1976. That movie got her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year – Actress.
Knight sang the song “The Need To Be” in Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself (2009), which was based on a play he had written.
Fans were amazed by Gladys Knight’s weight loss journey
People who liked Gladys Knight were surprised by how she changed after she was on the reality show Dancing with the Stars (2012).
She was able to lose 60 pounds of weight while getting ready for the reality competition show.
To get ready, she joined Freshology’s Getslim with the Stars program, which made her exercise and controlled what she ate.
Then, she worked out with Tristan MacManus, who was her dancing partner on the show, and lost a lot of weight.
Knight is happy that her health is getting better, even though she may have entered the competition more to lose weight than to improve her health.
Early years
Knight was born in Atlanta. Her parents, Merald Woodlow Knight Sr., a mailman, and Sarah Elizabeth (née Woods), are her mother and father. She has one living brother, Merald “Bubba” Jr., and one brother who has passed away, David. She sang in the church choir during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1952, when she was eight years old, she won a contest on Ted Mack’s TV show The Original Amateur Hour. This gave her a small amount of fame. At Bubba’s 10th birthday party that same year, a broken record player led Gladys, her brother Bubba, her sister Brenda, and their cousins Eleanor and William Guest to start singing together. Elizabeth Knight, Gladys’s mother, soon got the five of them to agree to form a band. They chose the name The Pips because that was what their cousin James “Pip” Woods was called. In 1955, the group started to perform at talent shows in Atlanta, where they were from. They won every talent show they entered. Because of their success, Brunswick Records signed them to a record deal in 1957. At Brunswick, the group put out two songs that didn’t make the charts. Even so, the band was now opening for big names in music like Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke. By 1959, Brunswick stopped working with the group, and Brenda Knight and Eleanor Guest left to start families. Edward Patten, another cousin, and Langston George, a friend, took their place.
In 1961, they made a record of “Every Beat of My Heart,” which was written by Johnny Otis. The group didn’t have a record label, so a local Atlanta label called Huntom Records promoted the single and worked out a deal with Vee-Jay Records to get it out. During this time, the group moved to New York and tried out for Fury Records, which was run by Bobby Robinson. Robinson told the group to re-record “Every Beat of My Heart” and put it out again on Fury Records when he found out that the song was already a hit. This was because the group wasn’t getting paid for it. Both versions were on the Billboard charts, with the Huntom/Vee-Jay version reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the re-release on Fury Records, the group changed its name to Gladys Knight & the Pips. Later in 1961, the group put out the single “Letter Full of Tears,” which became another top-40 hit in early 1962. Langston George left the group in 1962, after a series of singles were released on Fury Records. In the same year, Knight quit the band to start a family with her husband, the musician Jimmy Newman. In 1964, she joined the group again, and they signed with Larry Maxwell’s Maxx label. Van McCoy produced a few songs, like “Lovers Always Forgive” and the first version of “Giving Up,” which had some modest success. “(There Will Never Be) Another Love,” “Either Way I Lose,” “Go Away, Stay Away,” “Maybe Maybe Baby,” “Stop and Get a Hold of Myself,” “Who Knows,” and “If I Should Ever Fall in Love” are some other great songs they put out on Maxx.
Knight in 1974
Gladys Knight & the Pips joined Motown Records in 1966, even though they didn’t have a “sure hit.” The label thought of them as a second-string act at first, but they went on to have a number of big hits, including “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1967), “Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me” (1967), “The Nitty Gritty” (1969), “Friendship Train” (1969), “If I Were Your Woman” (1970 (1973). In the beginning of their time with Motown, Gladys Knight and the Pips went on tour with Diana Ross and The Supremes. Gladys Knight wrote in her memoirs that Ross kicked her off the tour because the audience loved her soulful performance more than Ross. Berry Gordy told Knight later that she didn’t like his act.
In 1973, the group left Motown for a better deal with Buddah Records. That same year, they had hits like “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which won a Grammy and was number one on the pop and R&B charts, “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” “The Way We Were/Try to Remember,” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.” In the summer of 1974, Knight and the Pips worked with producer Curtis Mayfield to record the music for the movie Claudine. The songs “On and On,” “The Makings of You,” and “Make Yours a Happy Home” were all on the soundtrack. The act was especially popular in Europe, and especially in the UK. But a few of Buddah’s singles became hits in the UK years after they came out in the US. For example, “Midnight Train to Georgia” reached the top five of the UK singles chart in the summer of 1976, three years after it was a hit in the U.S.
During this time when Knight was well-known, he was in the Alaska-based romantic drama Pipe Dreams. The movie didn’t do well at the box office, but Knight was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best New Actress.
Knight and the Pips kept having hits until the late 1970s, when legal issues forced them to record separately. This led to Knight’s first solo LPs, Miss Gladys Knight (1978) on Buddah and Gladys Knight (1979) on Columbia Records. After getting a divorce from James Newman II in 1973, Knight married Barry Hankerson, who worked for Detroit mayor Coleman Young at the time. Hankerson was the uncle of future hip-hop and R&B singer Aaliyah. Knight and Hankerson were married for four years and had a son, Shanga Ali, during that time. Hankerson and Knight got into a heated fight over who should take care of Shanga Ali.
In 1980, Johnny Mathis asked Gladys Knight to sing “When a Child is Born” and “The Lord’s Prayer” with him. Both songs had been hits for Mathis.
On November 1, 1981, Knight and the Pips played on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger.
Gladys Knight & the Pips started putting out new music after they signed with Columbia Records in 1980 and went back to being a quartet. Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who used to work at Motown, produced the band’s first two albums, About Love (1980), which had the hit “Landlord,” and Touch (1981). (1981).
“Save the Overtime (For Me)” was another hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1983. The song was done in a soulful boogie style. Leon Sylvers III, who has worked on hits with Shalamar, was in charge of the music. The single came from their album “Visions.” It peaked at number 66 on the Hot 100, but it did better on the R&B charts, where it was number one for a week in the middle of 1983. With this single, the group reached the top of the R&B chart for the first time since 1974. The music video for the song was one of the first R&B videos to use elements from hip hop culture. The R&B hit “You’re Number One (In My Book)” was also on the album. During this time, Knight quit his addiction to gambling on the game baccarat.
Knight decided to go out on her own in 1987, and she and the Pips made their last album together, called “All Our Love,” for MCA Records. Its catchy first single, “Love Overboard,” was an R&B number-one hit and won the group another Grammy. After a successful tour in 1988, the Pips went their separate ways, and Knight started her own career. Gladys Knight & the Pips were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1989, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.