Gladys Knight Tickets

Short Biography

Very few singers have matched the unassailable artistry of the Empress of Soul, who began her illustrious career in the 60’s as the lead vocalist of the Pop, R&B and Soul ensemble, Gladys Knight and the Pips, releasing her first album at just sixteen and a string of chart busting singles - Midnight Train to Georgia (3 Grammy Awards), I Heard It Through The Grapevine, I’ve Got to Use My Imagination, If I Were Your Woman, Letter Full of Tears, Every Beat of My Heart, Best Thing to Ever Happen To Me, Friendship Train and On and On, from the Academy Award nominated soundtrack to Curtis Mayfield’s comedy, Claudine.

Gladys has earned further Grammy recognition for her solo album At Last and collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Dionne Warwick on That’s What Friends Are For, the debut album One Voice with the 100 member multi-cultural Saints Unified Gospel Choir she formed and her duet with Ray Charles on his Genius Loves Company album, Heaven Help Us All.

Other accolades include a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction and Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award.

As an actress, Gladys triumphed in the starring role of Broadway’s musical smash Smokey Joe’s Café and has numerous film and television credits.  She produced and starred in the HBO special Sisters In The Name of Love (with Dionne and Patti LaBelle), co-starred with Flip Wilson in Charlie & Co and has appeared in Benson, The Jefferson’s, An Enemy Amongst Us, Desperado, JAG, Hollywood Homicide,  Unbeatable Harold, Pipe Dreams, 30 Rock and the Tyler Perry film I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

Gladys sings the theme to James Bond’s Licence to Kill and her single, Settle, is featured on the Tyler Perry film For Coloured Girls.

Following a critically acclaimed five year run at the Flamingo Hotel (credited regularly as the Show of the Year by the Las Vegas Review Journal), Gladys returned to the Glitter Strip’s Tropicana Hotel where the Tiffany Theatre was re-named in her honour.

Tickets on sale 9am Wednesday 19 September through Ticketmaster.com.au

In-depth Biography
One of the great soul singers, Gladys Knight was a performer from her childhood years, forming the Pips with her brother Merald and a couple cousins. They made the Top Ten in 1961 with the heavily doo wop-influenced "Every Beat of My Heart," and recorded some fine, nowadays overlooked pop-soul sides for the Fury and Maxx labels in the early and mid-'60s, sometimes under the direction of songwriter Van McCoy. A couple singles from this period, "Letter Full of Tears" and "Giving Up," made the Top 40, but Knight didn't hit her commercial stride until she moved to Motown in 1966. Steeped in the gospel tradition, like so many soul singers, Knight & the Pips developed into one of Motown's most dependable acts, although they never quite scaled the commercial or artistic heights of fellow stars on the label like the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and the Temptations. With Norman Whitfield providing the production and much of the songwriting, the Pips fit into the mainstream of Motown's machine well, scoring big hits with some rabble-rousers (like "Friendship Train" and the original version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"), mainstream midtempo soul ("It Should Have Been Me" and "The End of Our Road"), and smooth ballads like "If I Were Your Woman."

In 1973, Knight had her biggest Motown hit with "Neither One of Us," which made number two; shortly afterward, she and the Pips left Motown for Buddah. The group members were briefly superstars in 1973-1974, reeling off the smashes "Midnight Train to Georgia" (their only number one), "I've Got to Use My Imagination," and "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me." This ranked as some of their best material, but Knight soon moved toward an easy listening, adult contemporary direction, one that she's maintained to this day. Now performing separately from the Pips (who have retired), her days as a high-charting star ended after the mid-'70s, although she remains fairly popular, and maintained an active recording career into the new millennium, releasing At Last, an album of urban R&B, on MCA in 2000; One Voice, a gospel set, on Many Roads Records in 2005; and Before Me, an album of jazz standards, on Verve in 2006. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi