Ravinia 2026 Issue 3

Gladys Knight at Ravinia in 2017 gift from God. It’s apropos, then, that she made her singing debut at the Atlan- ta-based Mount Mariah Baptist Church. She was four years old. Three years later, she won first prize on The Original Amateur Hour , the legendary radio and television series hosted at the time by Ted Mack. In 1961, Gladys Knight and the Pips, comprised of Knight, her brother Mer- ald, cousins James “Pip” Woods, William Guest, Edward Patten, and Langston George, scored their first hit single, “Ev- ery Beat of My Heart,” followed in 1962 by the top-20 hit “Letter Full of Tears,” which was the title of their first album. George left the group that year, and from then on, Gladys Knight and the Pips was a quartet. A self-titled album was released in 1965. The group joined the Motown family on its Soul imprint label and were an instant smash hit with 1967’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which was featured on their album Everybody Needs Love . The hits, as they say, kept on com- ing, including “If I Were Your Woman,” “Friendship Train,” and the Gram- my-winning “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye).” It was in 1967, during her Motown tenure, that Knight submitted a demo reel of a group that impressed her when she saw them perform at Chicago’s legendary Regal Theatre. That group was the Jackson 5, then fronted by a 9-year- old Michael Jackson. Motown founder Berry Gordy initially passed on that demo, but Knight remained the group’s champion. (The Jackson 5 did join the label in 1968.) Knight and the Pips left Motown for Buddha Records, where they recorded more of their definitive hits, includ- ing “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “On and On” from the Curtis Mayfield-produced soundtrack to the romantic comedy Claudine , “Best Thing That Ever Hap- pened to Me,” and “I Feel a Song (In My Heart).” Jump cut past the disco era to the 1980s, Gladys Knight and the Pips had another string of hits—including “Save the Overtime (for Me)” and “Love Over- board”—before the Pips retired. Knight went on to have a successful solo career with such hits as the theme from the 1989 James Bond film License to Kill and “Men.” She also branched out from recording to act on television (CBS’s sitcom Charlie & Co. ) and in films ( Pipe Dreams , Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself , Almost Christmas , and Coming 2 America ). On and on, Knight has recorded al- most 40 albums, including the NAACP Image Award-winning gospel album Where My Heart Belongs . Writing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Dave Marsh called Gladys Knight’s voice “one of the more remarkable instru- ments of the rock, soul, and R&B eras … a perfect blend of grace and grit.” Or, as Oprah Winfrey paid tribute to Knight in 1992, “We all know the differ- ence between singing and being able to sang . Gladys can sang .” She has been sanging ever since her mother played her Nat King Cole’s 1951 hit “Too Young” and told her daughter that she wanted her to learn the song. “He had such a smooth voice,” Knight told the Washington Post in 2022. “His stuff was mellow. So that’s how I got into singing.” It was her rendition of that song earned her the top prize on The Original Amateur Hour . After 70 years, Knight, 82, is tes- tament to the role Black women have played in building the blueprint for live R&B, according to Bobby Pen, writer for The Grio . In addition to her solo concerts, Knight also tours with Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, and Stephanie Mills as part of “The Queens: 4 Legends. 1 Stage.” “These women are not museum piec- es. They are blueprints,” Pen wrote. Knight, he elaborated, “gave genera- tions a language for heartbreak and de- votion. … [She represents] a generation of Black women performers who helped shape what audiences still expect from live R&B: real vocals, emotional com- mand, glamour, grit, humor, testimony, and the ability to make an arena feel like a living room, a sanctuary, and a family reunion all at once.” The laurels, too, just keep on coming. In May, “Midnight Train to Georgia” was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, its collec- tion of recordings that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and inform or reflect life in the United States.” Knight is one of the few Rock and Roll Hall of Famers who have contin- ued to make hits from the 1960s until the present day. What she said in 2019, before singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, still applies: “I’m doing what the Lord called me to do.” Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based entertainment writer. His work has appeared in the Washington Post , Town & Country , IndieWire , and on VanityFair.com. The first Ravinia concert he attended without his parents was Procol Harum in 1970. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUGUST 3 – AUGUST 16 , 2026 8 PREVIOUSSPREAD:DEREKBLANKS;THISPAGE:PATRICKGIPSON / RAVINIA