Mojo - The Music Magazine

...SEE NUMBER 7

Gladys Knight And The Pips
The Nitty Gritty
(Soul, 1969)

Motown’s First Lady Of Soul sifts through the rubble of love.

She was the best female singer, bar none, to cross the threshold of 2648 West Grand Boulevard, but Gladys Knight was never considered an A-List priority act as far as Motown was concerned, so intent was the focus on promoting Diana Ross’s career. However, one listen to her majestically asserting the truths of two brilliant Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson songs, the punishing Didn’t You Know (You’d Have To Cry Some Time) or Keep An Eye (“on your close friends” is the caution that follows), reveal the soul reality. She was in a league of her own. Elsewhere, Knight gets right inside the pain of All I Could Do Was Cry. In this Berry Gordy co-write from an earlier time, previously best known as an Etta James song, she watches in anguish as the man she should be marrying weds another. The Nitty Gritty is special, too, in that it features two Gladys Knight songwriting credits – Runnin’ Out and The Stranger – both standard Motown arrangements, the latter is the better, and one co-write on I Want Him To Say It Again. Not a feminist tract by any means, but she absolutely sings the pants off it. It’s Summer, a Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong ballad, offers a necessary change of pace and tone but the album is predominantly concerned with the nitty gritty of physical attraction and emotional commitment, be it consummated or crushed. Also of note: Cloud Nine, one of the few songs Knight was never able to get “inside”, she felt, because she had no experience of drugs. Hear how the Pips get a far greater share of the vocals.

Geoff Brown

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