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.
Yes, it’s that L word again.
"How do you keep yourself looking so good at your age? “I don’t have any secrets, I just lurve,” she says.
“Love keeps you in a certain way, you know what I’m saying?”
How do you cope with your 17 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren?
“I teach them how to love, that’s how they get their spirits right. It’s love that makes the world go round.”
And are you looking forward to meeting British fans when you tour the UK in June?
“Oh yeah, I love them, and when I say love it’s really for real. They give love back to me too. They hug me and they say, ‘ooh yeah that feels really good’.”
After decades on top, and with seven Grammys on her mantlepiece, Motown legend Gladys clearly has much more love to give.
And it seems to be doing her good – she ends most sentences with a giggle or even a full belly laugh.
Gladys has reason to be cheerful thanks to a stellar career laced with highs.
She scored a string of top 10 hits on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1960s to the 1980s, including a UK No1 for her James Bond theme song Licence to Kill.
There was also global mega-hit That’s What Friends Are For, a double-Grammy winner with Dionne Warwick, Elton John and Stevie Wonder.
Two of her songs, Midnight Train and I Heard It Through the Grapevine, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and she is ranked among Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
If that’s not enough, she is also credited with discovering the Jackson Five and remained close friends with Michael Jackson throughout his life.
At his funeral in 2009 she gave a tear-jerking rendition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Gladys says she was like an “older sister” to the superstar and, yes, she says she also taught him about love.
She says: “I still miss him every day. Me and Michael, we started at a very young age. I know his mum and dad and brothers and sister. He knew all of my kids, we were very tight together. I’m so sad that he’s not here anymore.
“We would do shows together and afterwards sit in the lobby and just talk about life.
“I remember one day he came over to my house, because he was friends with my kids, and we were having fun. And then he asked me something and it almost made me cry.
“He said, ‘Gladys, how do you make a family?’ I said, Michael, you’ll be able to have one, it’s got to be in your spirit, you’ve got to calm yourself down. It’s who you love, that’s what it is.
“You’ve got to take that time away, and one day love will fall into your lap. I think about him every day. He was an amazing young man.
“I love his mom, she reminds me of my mom and they were good friends too.
“Both of them tried to keep us on the straight and narrow.”
Born in Atlanta, Gladys began singing in the church choir, before winning a TV talent contest aged eight in 1952. That year she formed The Pips. The original line-up included her brother Bubba, sister Brenda and their cousins Eleanor and William Guest.
After winning every talent show they entered in their home city, the group had several Top 40 hits before moving to New York.
Then they got an offer from Motown. The catch was they had to get to Detroit – so the siblings pawned everything they owned, including Bubba’s guitar, to buy four bus tickets.
The move paid off, as the rebranded Gladys Knight and The Pips reeled off the hits including If I Were Your Woman and the Grammy winning Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be the First to Say Goodbye).
Even greater success came after they left the label, with hits including Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me, which reached No7 in the UK.
Gladys then received a Golden Globe nomination for her first acting role in the romantic film Pipe Dreams.
Her success continued after she went solo in 1989. But in 2009 she disappointed British fans by announcing her farewell tour of the UK. Then she delighted them by changing her mind and doing further shows here from 2015.
This year’s tour, which begins in Manchester and ends with two nights at the Royal Albert Hall, is her first visit since before the pandemic.
I ask Gladys what she loves about her periodic trips across the Atlantic.
“Oh, I have a great time when I come to the UK,” she says.
“I’ve been coming over for so long. In fact, I used to come over and get my kids their school clothes. For real! When they went out people were asking us, ‘Where did you get those pants?’ I’d say, ‘You’ll have to go to England and check it out!’
“I always make the most of my time in the UK. If I run across any of my friends there we have a good time. I love the way you can just relax and do your thing.
“If someone wants to come on stage and sing with me, that’s fine with me.”
While Gladys is in love with love, her personal life has been far from a bed of roses. She has had four marriages, the first when she was just 16 to Atlanta musician James Newman, who later became a drug addict and abandoned her and their two kids.
She has also experienced family tragedy – her son Jimmy, who managed her career, died from heart failure in 1999 aged just 36. Another son, Shanga, who she had with second husband Barry Hankerson, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 over a $1million tax scam at four restaurants he set up bearing his mum’s name, Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles.
She sued him to have her name removed.
Since 2001, though, Gladys has been happily married to “the love of my life” William McDowell, who is 14 years her junior and helps manage her career.
She has also sung on a single he released and they are helping build a community centre through their charity. Gladys says: “He’s the love of my life. When I first saw him I said, ‘Ooh, he’s really cute’! He’s my manager.
“A lot of people can’t work with their other half, you’ve got to have that respect and lift each other up. He’s brought me such a, it sounds like a song but, a mighty long way. He does the business side and I do the creative. We see eye to eye. He loves music and sometimes does it better than I do. He comes on tour too.”
Does she wish she had met him years earlier? Laughing heartily she says: “I wish I could have, I wish I should have, all those things.
“He’s amazing, sometimes it takes a lifetime to find your true love.”
Between them the couple have 27 grandchildren and great-grandchildren to keep them busy.
Gladys says: “I’ve got a newborn, I’ve got babies just starting to walk, I’ve got a bunch of them. They call me Poppy.
“I’m just so blessed. God sent me some beautiful, awesome, smart children with that spirit in their hearts. I’m very proud of them. I also have a little dog now called Pepper. He’s something else.”
Are any of the youngsters following in granny’s footsteps? Again, Gladys doesn’t answer the question, only saying she’ll be happy if they “learn how to love”.
She adds: “That’s the best lesson in life, you’ve got to love one another,”
Gladys Knight tours the UK in June. Tickets at ticketline.co.uk.
