She goes on to convey the complexity of “the way” so many Black people in America “were” forced to be, and our complex relationship with the past. And then, blues: Come to think about it / As bad as we think they are / These will become the good old days of our children. Why don’t we try to remember / That kind of September / When life was sloooooow: So goes Knight’s introduction, elocuted with Sunday-grace pacing. Take, for example, her 1974 live recording of “ The Way We Were/Try to Remember,” when she remakes Barbra Streisand’s Academy Award–winning version. The joke is on who? The woman who led her crew into immortality? One camera breaks wide to capture costumes and choreography, and another focuses closely on what would be Gladys - a standing microphone. The real Bubba, William and Edward, in high spirits, go into a couple of GK&TP songs, beautifully doing absolutely only their background vocals. The funny is in the ampersand, right? In the precision with which Knight is clipped. In the video he looks as if he might come out from under that bolero. The earnest emotional surge of Knight’s voice and body language give John permission to get grimy. But it’s Knight who rolls into its last third, infused with the holiness of giving back (the song raised near $2 million for AIDS research) and the convergence of talent by which she is surrounded. One of the most transcendent pop records of all time, 1985’s “ That’s What Friends Are For,” stars Dionne Warwick, and features Stevie Wonder (on harmonica as well as vocals) and Elton John. But it is equally because though she has sold millions of records, toured globally, been nominated by her peers for 22 Grammys and won 7, and was inducted in 1996 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - Gladys is almost always a part of a group or collaboration. Part of this is because she came of age in the shadow of Diana Ross, whose anime eyes had seduced the world.
Even in her glowing, tiny-waisted, full-throated prime, Gladys Knight was underrated.
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