Gladys Knight: 2nd Anniversary : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Schlock soul may not be everybody's ticket to lasting stardom but it's worked quite well for Gladys Knight, thank you. Part of the secret is that Knight actually likes the stuff she sings: "The Way We Were" expresses an aspect of her artistry every bit as important as "I Heard It through the Grapevine." Besides, unlike Aretha Franklin, Knight understands how to be lachrymose without becoming hysterical.

Whatever her taste for sentimentality and the white audience it attracts, Knight is also shrewd enough to maintain her standing as a black performer. When she appears at the Apollo, she dons a natural; and with Buddah, her current label, she has gotten the opportunity to cultivate her audience on two fronts. She'll cut "The Way We Were" for the folks on Long Island, cut "Mr. Welfare" for the folks in Harlem, and finally clean up with "Midnight Train to Georgia" which aims to please just about everybody.

This strategy seemed pretty audacious when it was unveiled on Imagination, her first album for Buddah after leaving Motown in 1973. Unfortunately, the strategy has hardened into a formula, and the formula, on Second Anniversary, has become a big bore.

This is Knight's fourth LP for Buddah. Like its predecessors (except Claudine, a soundtrack album written and produced by Curtis Mayfield), it represents a pastiche of ballads (by the likes of Jim Weatherly, David Gates and Paul Williams) and soul (four songs by Eugene McDaniels).

In one sense, Second Anniversary has it all, right down to a live tear-jerker, "Georgia on My Mind." Trouble is, no tears are really jerked: "The Way We Were" was a brilliantly executed tour de force on I Feel a Song, but "Georgia" sounds merely contrived, cranking out nostalgia for the hankie crowd.

Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise have produced four cuts with the same high-gloss but hackneyed flair evident in their previous work with Knight. This time out, though, they're raking over second-rate material, which elicits calculated readings.

The four tracks composed and produced by McDaniels, although they're more interesting, fall equally flat. One, "Summer Sun," features some eerie and effective harmonizing by Knight and the Pips; another, "Street Brother," lets the Pips take center stage. But McDaniels has a penchant for preachy lyrics, and a song like "Money" calls upon almost every cliché in the good book of socially conscious songwriting. That leaves "Feel like Makin' Love," where Knight, despite a relatively strong performance, fails to summon a mood to sustain the song for its six-minute duration.

Throughout, Knight remains the consummate entertainer, even if this record tells a tale of talent squandered. Thus far, playing both ends against the middle has paid off handsomely, aesthetically as well as commercially, for Gladys Knight and the Pips. Still, of Knight's recent albums, Claudine remains the most satisfying, thanks to its unified approach. Gladys Knight and the Pips have won a wide audience; the time has come to show it something new.