![]() “I didn’t realize the importance of it until much later in my life. The finals were televised live from Madison Square Garden. In 1952, she traveled to New York City several times by train to compete on the nationally televised Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour-and against all odds, won it all by charming the country’s TV viewers as she closed in weekly on the big prize (the award practically stood as tall as Gladys). At the tender age of four, Little Miss Gladys, born May 28, 1944, had been a featured vocalist at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Atlanta. Of course, Gladys’ singing ability was already fairly well-known across the nation. That lack of recorded sounds forced Gladys, Bubba, and their relatives to make their own music-and confirmed the quintet had real vocal talent, enough to convince their folks to invest in their performing future. There’s a possibility that none of it would have happened if a young neighbor of the Knights hadn’t insisted on taking his record player home at Gladys’ brother Bubba’s tenth birthday party because no one else wanted to hear his choice of platters. on all-star package tours and made a name for themselves as a high-energy act displaying dynamic vocal harmonies with a lovely teenaged lead singer who glowed with soul-steeped goodness. The other, which sold very well too, is one of the many highlights of this expansive overview of the legendary Atlanta group’s early years, when Gladys and the Pips traversed the U.S. The first version, which turned out to be an R&B chart-topper, was released without their consent-for all intents, a bootleg. The extremely unusual situation wasn’t their fault. But that’s precisely what happened when Gladys Knight and the Pips watched their two competing renditions of “Every Beat Of My Heart” chase one another up the R&B and pop hit parades during the spring of 1961. It was quite a rare development when a new act exploded on the charts with two simultaneously released versions of the same song.
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