Gladys Knight Bio, Age, Husband, Children, Net Worth, Songs & Pips

Gladys Knight (born May 28, 1944 – age as in 2020 75 years), is an American singer, actress, songwriter, businesswoman, and author. She is also known as the “Empress of Soul”. Gladys Knight began a music career with her brothers, sisters, and cousins at age 8. They all were calling their group “the Pips.” The group launched for R&B legends in the 1950s. After some time controlled to Motown and crossed over to pop music. The Pips recorded their signature song, “Midnight Train to Georgia.” Knight dropped the Pips behind in 1989 and carry on to perform and record as a solo artist. Today, she’s known fondly as the “Empress of Soul.”A seven-time Grammy Award-winner, Knight is known for the hits she recorded during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with her group Gladys Knight & the Pips, which also included her brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins Edward Patten and William Guest.

Knight has recorded two number-one Billboard Hot 100 singles, six number-one R&B albums, and eleven number-one R&B singles. She has earned seven Grammy Awards that are 4 as a solo artist and 3 with the Pips. And also is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with The Pips. She also recorded the motif song for the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill. Knight is also listed as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Gladys Knight Bio/ Wiki

Family

Knight was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father Merald Woodlow Knight Sr., a postal worker, and her mother Sarah Elizabeth (née Woods). She has a sister, Brenda, one breathing brother, Merald Jr., and one outshine brother, David. She first accomplished minor fame by achieving Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour TV show challenge at the age of seven in 1952.

That same year, she, her brother Merald, sister Brenda, and cousins William and Eleanor Guest formed a musical company called the Pips (named after another cousin, James “Pip” Woods). By the end of the decade, the act had begun to tour and had restored Brenda Knight and Eleanor Guest with Gladys Knight’s cousin Edward Patten and friend Langston George.

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Gladys Knight Net Worth

Gladys Knight’s estimated Net Worth, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & much more details has been updated below. Let’s check, How Rich is Gladys Knight in 2023?

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Husband/ Spouse and Children

• Knight wedded her first husband, an Atlanta musician named Jimmy Newman, at age 16. The marriage developed two children, James and Kenya, before Newman, a drug addict, abandoned the family and died only a few years later.
• Her second wedding, to Barry Hankerson, ended suddenly in 1979 after five years in a protract guardianship battle over their son, Shanga.
• Knight wedded to the author and motivational speaker Les Brown in 1995, that marriage ended in 1997. In addition to stormy love life, Knight went through a serious speculation problem that lasted more than a decade. In the late 1980s, after losing $45,000 in one night at the baccarat table, Knight joined a phycologist, which supported her pulled out the habit. Since 1978, Knight has lived in Las Vegas, close to her mother, Elizabeth, and two of her children and their families. She goes on to perform regularly in Las Vegas and besides, and published an autobiography, Between Each Line of Pain and Glory: My Life Story, in 1997. With the Pips, she was enlisted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and secured a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 1998.

she had reportedly met 10 years earlier, but had only begun dating the previous January.

The Pips

Gladys Knight and Pips’ first single, “Whistle My Love,” was delivered by Brunswick in 1957. The Pips didn’t grade a bona fide hit until 1961 when they delivered “Every Beat of My Heart.” But it was when the group began recording with Motown Records in the mid-1960s and were teamed with songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield, that their races really took off.

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In 1967, the Pips’ gives versions of Whitfield’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”. later an enormous hit for Marvin Gaye spanned over from the rhythm and blues charts to the pop charts. Their fame widened with the success of singles like “Nitty Gritty,” “Friendship Train” and “If I Were Your Woman,” combined with touring achievements with the Motown Revue and plentiful TV arrivals. Knight and the Pips left Motown in 1973 for Buddah Records, a subsidiary of Arista.

Solidly, their last Motown single song, “Neither One of Us Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye,” became the Pips’ first No. 1 crossover hit and a Grammy champion for Best Pop Vocal Show in 1973. The group now is known officially as Gladys Knight and the Pips. The group was moving higher than ever during the mid-1970s with a creamier, more reachable sound, a hit album, Imagination (1973), and three gold singles, “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”, “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,”  and the Grammy Award-winning No. 1 hit “Midnight Train to Georgia” (Best R&B Vocal Performance).

In 1974, the group recorded the soundtrack for the film Claudine, with songs written by Curtis Mayfield; the soundtrack album spawned the hit single “On and On.” Their next album, I Feel a Song (1975), included Knight’s hit version of Marvin Hamlisch’s “The Way We Were,” also popularized by Barbra Streisand, the album’s title track became a No. 1 soul hit.

Knight and the Pips presented their own TV special in the summer of 1975, and in 1976, Knight made an appearance in the film Pipe Imaginations, for which she and the Pips also recorded the soundtrack album. She later co-starred reverse comic Flip Wilson on the 1985-86 sitcom Charlie & Co. Due to fair complications with Buddah, Knight and the Pips were forced to record separately in the last years of the 1970s.

Although they extend performing jointly in live gigs. After signing a new contract with Columbia, the group delivered three homecoming albums during the early 1980s, About Love (1980), Touch (1982) and Visions (1983), scoring hits with such singles as “Landlord”, “Save the Overtime for Me” and “You’re Number One”.

Moving to MCA Records in 1988, Knight and the Pips released their final album together. The “All Our Love”, album, that included the Grammy-winning single “Love Overboard.” The next year, Knight left the Pips to launch a solo career, recording the title song for the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989) and the album A Good Woman (1990), which featured guest stars Dionne Warwick and Patti Labelle.

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Top Songs List With Pips

Solo Career

• After the 1990s, Knight went on to tour and record, producing the successful 1994 album Just For You and earning a commendation for her regularly strong vocals and dedicated work style.
• In inclusion to her musical career, she also served in a reappearing role in the 1994 TV series New York Undercover.
• Knight has also emerged on Living Single and JAG. On the big screen, she had a role in Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself in 2009.
• While no longer a big success, Knight, known famously today as the “Empress of Soul,“ has extended to make records. She once expressed, “Since I’ve been so extraordinarily divine, I really want to share and to make life at least a little better. So every chance I get to share the gospel or uplift people, I will take full advantage of that moment.“
• Knight conspire with the Saints United Voices for her 2005 gospel album One Voice, which did well. Knight’s 2006 album Before Me also earned a warm response.
• In 2012, Knight pronounced to take on another kind of role by entering the cast of Dancing with the Stars, the popular television game, and swagger her stuff against the likes of actress Melissa Gilbert, actor Jaleel White, and TV temper Sherri Shepherd.
• In 2014, she dropped another studio album, the gospel-infused Where My Heart Belongs.
• In 2019, it was declared that Knight would sing the national anthem before Super Bowl LIII.

Legacy

Gladys Knight & the Pips were inaugurated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. One year before, Knight had collected a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2007, Knight earned the ELLA Award at which time she has confirmed the “Empress of Soul”. She is labeled on Rolling Stone’s list of the Greatest Singers of All Time.

Facts

• She sang publicly for the first time at the age of 4 at the Mount Mariah Baptist Church in Atlanta.
• She won the grand prize on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour at the age of 8.
• She made the musical group the Pips, which included her brother, sister, and cousins, in 1952.
• Pips’ first hit song was in 1960 with “Every Beat of My Heart.”
• She had a gambling addiction for more than 10 years but sought help in the late 1980s after losing $45,000 in one night.
• She worked as a Co-star with Flip Wilson in the short-lived 1985 CBS comedy Charlie & Company.
• She is a part-owner of Gladys Knight & Ron Winans’ Chicken & Waffles restaurant chain.
• She was performed at the funeral for Michael Jackson in 2009.
• She was a contestant on the reality show Dancing With the Stars in 2012. While she was eliminated during the show’s Motown Week performances.

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