The Best of Gladys Knight & The Pips - An Attempt at an Appreciation.

The affluence of post-war America reached down even into the ghettoes, sprinkling a chosen few with fame. Recording empires like Tamla Motown stand like the symbol of justice, balancing two foes: American capitalism and Black nationalism. The artists of these studios, like all rock 'n roll performers, since rock 'n roll was in the first instance a movement of the streets, have had to straddle these contradictions. The most successful of the artists have left the ghettoes far behind, but the best of their music has not lost the pulse of the streets.

Soul is the flowering of gospel in the modern cities, with equal grafts of musical threatre and jazz. Some of the musical characteristics are a powerful beat combined with rhythmic freedom i.e. syncopation, free bass lines, a 'late' vocal attack (ie the singer tends to lag behind the backing), and a call-and-response vocal format, taken straight from gospel.

The other side of the balance, that determined by shite culture, is evident in the extreme professionalism of most soul music, the 'slickness' of the backing and the precision of the arrangements. Listen to any soul hit record and you will know just how stylised soul has become. Soul music is an industry, but an industry with soul.

The first time I heard this record. The Best of Gladys Knight and the Pips., I was struck by its strangeness. It seemed to suggest a different being, tearing itself apart with contradictions. And the singing of Gladys Knight, although breathtaking, appeared to me at the same time too free, and too restrained. I thought she was free technically, and restrained personally. The music, even when it was most strictly in the form of soul, seemed to lack a real immediacy - if Billie Holliday had soul, Gladys Knight seemed to have style.

For those of us used to listening to white variants of rhythm and blues, especially those of us weaned on the Beatles, this music might be even a little shocking. In much rock, styles are tried on like coats in a second-hand store - the style, if you like, is the lack of identity. Part of the Beatles' power was their energy of eclecticism.

Soul, by comparison, is an extremely direct music - the style is the skeleton. It has evolved to a high level of technical skill, and yet the most virtuosic playing never loses its 'feel', and never strays from the musical path. Soul is music to live with.

Appreciating these songs therefore solved a break with certain preconceptions; I had to realise that music can be uniform, and still be a medium of personal expression.

So in the first place, Gladys Knight and the Pips are a soul group through and through. They have a night-club veneer - urchins in sequins - and because the music is removed from its sources, this soul music is more rigidly stylized than most but, as I have said, soul is style.

The group does interpretations of very conventional pop songs - 'Midnight Train to Georgia' and 'The Way We Were' - but these are revitalised by the rhythm and by the soul-timing of the singers.

Although the lyrics are all in the best tradition of American show music, the lyrical content tends to be overwhelmed by the drive of the music.

This is done vocally by dragging out the word over a series of notes, as in 'You're the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me' - 'ee-ee-ee-every moment that I spend hurting'. It is also emphasised with purely wordless vocal notes - 'ah, ooh'. The words are forced below the surface of the music. At the same time, the intensity of Gladys Knight's vocal performance is counterpointed by the smoothness of the backing.

So the music is soul, and the singer is Gladys Knight. She is formed out of the style, but after listening a few times, one feels that the style exists for her. She can transcend the idiom, but only in the idiom. She probably doesn't need the Pips, but as it stands, the best parts of this record give a feeling that can only be described as sacred.

— Patrick Mulrennan