Adding to the public’s confusion was the fact that Vee-Jay’s label listed the group as the Pips while the Fury single named them Glady’s Knight and the Pips. By July 10th the group found itself in the unusual position of having the same song on two different labels and two different recordings on the charts Vee-Jay’s at number six Pop and number one R&B and Fury’s at number 45 Pop and number 15 R&B. The Vee-Jay and Fury 45s raced up the charts, first hitting Pop (May 15, 1961) and then R&B (May 29, 1961) on both labels at the same time. Both versions sounded like they were sung by a mature woman rather than a 16-year-old girl. They copied the Huntom Vee-Jay version, though that original was more soulful and had more pervasive harmonies than the new recording, a sultry, pseudo-supper-club interpretation. In an instant the group was in New York recording the song at Beltone Studios for Fury. In the meantime an Atlanta disc jockey named James Patrick sent a copy to his friend Bobby Robinson at Fury Records in New York. Huntom then sold the rights to Vee-Jay Records. The song took off in Atlanta so quickly that Hunter didn’t have time to sing the group. Wilson (godfather of singer Jody Watley) arranged an introduction to his label, Brunswick Records, and the group ended up releasing one single for them “Whistle My Love,” in early 1958.īy 1959 Eleanor and Brenda left to get married and the Pips drew on their reservoir of cousins to fill out the quintet, enlisting Edward Patten (22) and Langston George.Ī local Atlanta club owner named Clifford Hunter (who had booked the group at his Builders Club) started his own label with a friend, Tommy Brown (Griffin Brothers), called it Huntom, and recorded the group on the 1952 Johnny Otis penned “Every Beat of My Heart” (the Royals). Gladys’s soulful, church-trained alto lead, accompanied by the Pips’ warn harmony, helped the Atlanta teens crack the tour circuit without a record, and by 1957 they’d been on the road with Sam Cooke, B.B. She ran off with the $2,000 top prize by singing “Too Young” (Nat King Cole) at the ripe old age of seven on “The Ted Mack Amateur Hour,” and she subsequently did a number of other TV shows.Īnother cousin (James “Pip” Woods) lent the quintet his nickname and the group was off and running. Gladys, only eight at the time, was already an experienced performer, having begun signing with the Mount Mariah Baptist Church choir at the age of four and having toured the church circuit with the Morris Brown Choir by five. The members, all from Atlanta, Georgia, were sisters Gladys and Brenda Knights, brother Merald (“Bubba”) Knight, and cousins Eleanor and William Guest. The bunch included two sisters, a brother, and two cousins. One of the earliest and finest of the family-based rhythm and blues groups, Gladys Knight and the Pips originally formed at an impromptu 10th birthday party of Gladys’s brother Merald in 1952.
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