'Go Back to the Studio'
GLADYS & THE PIPS GET THEIR ‘GOODBYE’ VIBE
It’s the month of March, and millions of people have been seeing and hearing Gladys Knight.
Two weekends ago, there she was, delivering a powerful performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the NBA All-Star Game, televised from coast-to-coast. Two nights ago, she turned in a memorable take of “What’s Going On” for CBS-TV’s A Grammy Salute to the Sounds of Change, reaching another audience of millions. And at the beginning of this week, she debuted in a Capitol One credit card commercial, singing “Midnight Train To Georgia” with actor Samuel L. Jackson, film director Spike Lee and former basketball champ Charles Barkley as faux Pips.
Heading for the exit
Turn the clock back to this week in March 1973 and Knight & the Pips’ “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)” is all over the airwaves and hustling its way into the Top 10 of the pop charts. Advance the calendar by just a few days and there’s the group legally saying goodbye to Motown, as their new recording deal with Buddah Records takes effect.
As Knight has often noted, the quartet felt unfulfilled at Berry Gordy’s shop, labouring in the shadow of stars he built from scratch. William Guest of the Pips said as much to Melody Maker in 1971: “You can’t uphold somebody just because you’re under contract to them, just like you can’t make a pretty flower out of dead seeds.” When the group’s seven-year contract expired and Motown’s then-president Ewart Abner couldn’t – or wouldn’t – match the competition’s offer, the decision to leave was easy.
Ironically, “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)” – one of their last Motown recordings – earned the group their first Grammy. Alleviating the irony was the fact that, at the same award ceremonies in March 1974, they also gained a Grammy for their first Number One with Buddah, “Midnight Train To Georgia.”
GUITAR + HUMMING = MAGIC
Both songs were the creations of Mississippi’s Jim Weatherly, whose death last month led Knight to pay public tribute. “When we were with him, it was like we’d always been together, we fit together,” she told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. “He started playing his guitar, and I started humming and it was magic. He was more like family than an associate. We’d get together for lunch or dinner and we weren’t artists, we were family. And something different just happened for us. His music propelled us to a whole different level.” On Twitter, she said of Weatherly, “We grew our lives together.” True enough: she and the Pips recorded more than a dozen of his compositions, a music match originally made by Joe Porter, producer of “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye).”
The songs some people choose to love
“The latter part of our contract with Motown, we met Joe Porter,” remembered Bubba Knight in Bill Dahl’s Motown: The Golden Years, “who was raving over this new writer that he had run across. His name was Jim Weatherly.” Porter was a fresh face at Motown himself, an independent record producer whose credits for the firm also included sessions with Bobby Darin, Lesley Gore and Thelma Houston. Prior to those, he produced Free Movement for Decca and Barbara McNair for Marina; later, he helmed the one and only Motown album by actress Diahann Carroll, with whom he was romantically involved. “Joe was a lovely man,” said writer Patti Dahlstrom, whose songs “And I Never Did” and “What If” were included in Houston’s first LP for Motown. “He was always so kind to me, and so supportive.”
Porter cut “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)” with Knight & the Pips at Armin Steiner’s Sound Labs studio in Hollywood. “The night that we recorded it, we were supposed to fly back to Detroit,” Bubba Knight told Bill Dahl. “And we got the lead vocal down on it, and we had done a part of the background. And we were singing the song on the way to the airport in the car.
“I said, ‘God, that song sure is stickin’ with us a lot.’ We got to the airport, man, we were getting ready to get on the plane. And it just struck us. ‘Go back to the studio. We’ve got a vibe, man, the spirit moved on us!’ We got back in the car, called the studio and told ’em we were coming back to the studio. And they held the studio open ’til we got back, man. We went back there and laid down the background to ‘Neither One Of Us,’ and, man, when we played that thing back, we knew we had something great.”
NO THOUGHT OF EGO
The way Knight & the Pips operated – as a democracy – was never better described than by another producer, Kenny Kerner, who was responsible (with Richie Wise) for some of their best work at Buddah. “When they do their background vocals,” he told me for The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits, “she would sit in the booth, and her brother Bubba would take charge [in the studio]. They’d have the parts worked out precisely. If they were off, she’d push the [intercom] button, ‘Bubba, you’re off here, you’re flat there, you’re sharp there.’ They’d listen to her.
“And the opposite was true also. When she was in there, if she had trouble with a line or something, they would be in the booth, saying, ‘Gladys, I think that’s not the right interpretation of the line. It was never, ‘I’m Gladys, you’re the Pips, listen to what I say, I’m the boss.’ None of that. It was what was best for this part right now. There wasn’t even a thought of ego.”
Giving her all at the All-Star Game
“Gladys wouldn’t let them do the harmony without her,” agreed Johnny Bristol, when reminiscing (also for the Billboard book) about his own sessions with the group at Motown. “When they were in the studio, she became a Pip. They were such creative people. And like Marvin Gaye, you’d go through the melody [with her] three or four times and she’d say, ‘Let me see what I can do with it.’ ”
So who better than Gladys herself to celebrate that democratic way of working, as recalled in her autobiographical Between Each Line of Pain and Glory about the night when both “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)” and “Midnight Train To Georgia” were garlanded?
“It was the greatest feeling in the world,” she wrote, “to walk up there and receive those Grammys after so many years of sitting in the audience, hoping and dreaming about the day we, too, would reap the fruits of our labors. All those nights on the road, sleeping in the car, eating hot dogs, or not eating at all. All the rehearsals and voice training with Mr. [Maurice] King. All the workouts and practice with Pops [Cholly Atkins]. All of the hours in the studio at Motown. All of the nights when we were opening for acts instead of headlining. All that time away from our children and other loved ones.”
Clearly, that was another March date to remember, similarly seen and heard by millions.
Music notes: if any one moment can explain the lasting appeal of “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye),” perhaps it’s when Gladys Knight’s heart-breaking voice cuts through the hypnotic repetition of DJ Koze’s electronic dance track, “Pick Up,” from 2018. “It’s sad to think,” she aches, over and over, amid melody and tempo far removed from the original recording. More conventional versions include the country music style of Bob Luman (a chart-rider in the same year as Knight & the Pips’ hit), the Manhattans’ soft-soul take, and the after-midnight melancholy of Charmaine Clamor. They’re all to be found in this West Grand playlist, together with writer Jim Weatherly’s 2003 re-record. His original recording of the song, on the 1972 album Weatherly, doesn’t appear to be available on streaming services, but can be found elsewhere online. Finally, if you’ve seen Gladys Knight’s Capitol One commercial mentioned above, you might note that the “Pips” – namely, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee and Charles Barkley – break into the Jackson 5’s “Goin’ Back To Indiana” at the close, signifying the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament playing in the state this year.