Even down the faint, faltering line from her farm in the North Carolina mountains, her voice still sounds soulfully warm. With her lilting southern drawl, Gladys Knight chats and chortles. And she talks a lot about love – or, as she says it, lurve.
It doesn’t even matter that the Empress of Soul, now aged 77, ignores most of my questions.
I had prepared ones on James Bond, her friendships with Stevie Wonder and Elton John, her thoughts on Adele’s Vegas woes. But it’s soon clear there’s only one thing that really gets the Midnight Train to Georgia singer chugging.
