Gladys Knight: Standing Ovation : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

A good Gladys Knight album is like a good B-movie. There are obvious problems with the cover and title, the violin arrangements, and some of the song titles. (For example, this one has something called "Can You Give Me Love With A Guarantee.") Many of the songs have dead spots in the middle, and the intellectual content of the lyrics leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, most of what counts on a record–the band, the production, and Gladys' singing–is inspired. And this is a joyful, amazingly energetic, wellcrafted album.

At the center is Gladys. She and the Pips have been together for 13 years. They didn't do much in the mid-Sixtics, and were signed by Motown in '67. For the first four years they worked mainly with producer Norman Whitfield, who was writing for and producing Marvin Gaye and the Temptations at the same time. With the exception of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" and a couple of others, Gladys was given mainly second-rate material to record. During the Whitfield years Gladys asserted her individuality by rising above the song–she'd throw in a "Let's get right on down" in her "Nitty Gritty," or just turn a phrase a certain way, and make the cut her own. Many of the Whitfield songs had weak verses and strong choruses, so the strategy was to save everything for the climax. The songs became pleas, repeated over and over again: "Don't you miss me a little bit, baby" or "You need love like I do, don't you?"

Gladys uses the same strategies in the generally looser, less bluesy material on this album with her two current producers, Johnny Bristol and Clay McMurray. The songs here are as erratic in quality as the former material, but a lot more varied. There's more of that exuberant, early Sixties rock and roll feeling to this album. One song begins: "My mama would die/To see me lose pride," just the way a Shirclles song might. My favorite, "No One Could Love You More," carries the Whitfield idea about climaxes to an extreme. It's almost all climax, Gladys and the Pips repeating the phrases over and over to a march beat. A lovely exuberant song.

Her recent single, "Make Me The Woman You Go Home To," is almost as unwieldy as its title. But Gladys throws in an unforgettable "Good God Almighty, Boy" and a brilliantly and humorously phrased "Fooling around" and transforms the song into a thing of beauty.

Her version of "Fire and Rain" is interesting. The Pips seem completely at a loss here, and there's a lot of violins where there shouldn't be any, but they really don't detract much from Gladys. She gives a fine, conventional reading of the song until she hits the word Jesus. Then she picks up and it sounds like she is going to tear the house down. Things calm down till she gets to "Lord knows when the cold winds blow ..." and she's off again. Makes you think she should record some gospel numbers on her next album.

The album's piece de resistance is "It Takes A Whole Lotta Man For A Woman Like Me"–which seems to be sort of "Maggie May" from the woman's point of view. It's the kind of song that represents Motown at its best, in both the sensitivity of the lyrics and the technical perfection. From the title you might expect it to be a typical Tina Turner song, i.e. "Boy, you're not tough enough for me." But Smokey Robinson worked on the lyrics, so instead the song says "Boy, you've hurt me too much and you're too insensitive for me." The best thing about it is the backup by the Pips–they do the kind of things that it takes ten years of singing together to do right. In their last single. "I Don't Want To Do Wrong," they played her superego; here, with their truly elegant harmonies, they egg her on, giving her more and more strength as the song progresses. It results in a remarkable intrapsychic experience.