In a box of records I recently acquired, I found a copy of the K-Tel compilation “Super Bad is Back,” which is the “sequel” to the K-Tel classic “Super Bad.” Featuring a delicious selection of funk and soul classics from the 1970’s the album features a double helping of classics by Glady Knight and the Pips – their 1973 single “Where Peaceful Waters Flow,” and their follow up mega-hit “Midnight Traub to Georgia.” One of the best soul songs to sing along, as I was bringing out my best inner Pip, it occurred to me that while I obviously know who Gladys Knight is, I can’t tell you anything about the Pips. Who were the Pips? What is a Pip? Were they nothing more than an interchangeable group of sharply dressed backup singers with slick moves? They couldn’t be, because the chemistry between Gladys Knight and the Pips was too electric to be happenstance. Suddenly I was pulling out my Gladys Knight and the Pips albums and I found myself reeling down a rabbit hole where I came to learn that the Pips were far more than just a backing group. The Pips were a musical family legacy that forever bound together one of the most exciting vocal groups ever to come out of Georgia.
So, what is a “Pip.” In literature, the most famous Pip is Charles Dicken’s hero from his novel “Great Expectations,” who explains in the opening chapter that as a child he could not say his own name, which was Phillip, and instead just called himself “Pip,” which stuck to him for the rest of his narrative. But there are many obscure definitions for the term “pip.” It can refer to a tiny fruit seed, an attractive or desirable thing, a short high pitched tone, the dots on a pair of dice or a domino, the action of cracking an eggshell or a disorder in birds where scales or a crust substance is formed on their tongue. In any of these cases (except for maybe the bird disease), the meaning of the band’s name could be relevant, but the real origin of The Pips has far greater significance, and a richer history than just being the name of a backing vocal group.
One fact that had eluded me until just now, only proving again that it’s never too late to learn something new and you never actually know it all, is that the Pips were a family group! I guess I never ever thought about who exactly those guys dancing and jiving behind Glady Knight were, or how they were connected to her. But the core group of the Pips consisted of Gladys’ older brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and their cousins William Guest and Edward Patten. There were some additional members in the earlier days of the group, but these four created the hits that are best remembered by music fans and carried the group through their most successful years from the late sixties through to the 1980es. However, the origins of the group dates back to the early 1950’s when the group were just a bunch of kids growing up in Georgia, and the name of the band was simply The Pips.
Now right from the beginning, Gladys Knight rose to the top of the top when it came to her singing. The Knight Family were from Atlanta and, like a lot of families that sang together, started singing in church choirs. Although not initially groomed for stardom, Gladys was noticed quickly for her exceptional talent, and in 1952 she auditioned for the nationally syndicated series Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour, in which she took first place. Accompanied to Florida for the tapings by her mother Elizabeth “Mama” Knight, it was then that her mother began to notice that Gladys had a flair for performance and saw how the audience was captivated with her. As a result of the performance, agents and promoters were trying to book Gladys right away. But with Gladys only being eight years old, Mama Knight worried of losing control of her young child and was hesitant to allow her to sign up with anyone, as well as wondered what might happen to Gladys on the road without the presence of the tight knit family unit around her.
A number of weeks after Gladys’ win, during a birthday party for her brother Bubba, who was turning ten, the family record player malfunctioned and as a way to entertain each other five of the cousins – Gladys, Bubba along with their sister Brenda, and William and his sister Elenore – formed an impromptu singing group and performed various songs of the day with great expertise. This off the cuff performance convinced Mama Knight that the kids had something special, and decided with the older siblings and cousins there to look out for Gladys that maybe this show business thing was the path that they should follow, and suddenly the kids were now a singing group.
Entering talent contests around Atlanta, someone needed to be put in charge of getting them to performances and taking care of their affairs. An older cousin, James Wood, stepped up and offered to manage the kids and for the next few years was a chaperone, mentor, manager and companion to them. But now it was time to come up with a name. Initially they thought they’d be called “The Knights Family,” but the Guest kids didn’t like that. However, the Knight kids weren’t going to be The Guest Family. It was then that the kids looked up to their cousin James for inspiration. You see, nobody actually called James by his real name. They all called him “Pip.” I can’t find out how he got that nickname, but the kids decided that they would call themselves “The Pips” after their older cousin who was looking out for them. Well, The Pips caught on, and by 1953 they became a notable vocal group in the Atlanta area.
But to be clear, the band was simply called The Pips at that time, and although Gladys was the soloist of the group, she was not pushed in front as the group’s leader. As the kids won talent show after talent show, they began to get some serious notice by disc jockeys, record producers and other music professionals, and in 1957 representatives from Brunswick Records moved in and signed the kids to a contract where they recorded their first single, “Ching Chong,” backed with “Whistle My Love.” “Ching Chong” was a curious first single where a thirteen year old Gladys sings about her love for an Asian boy. Although the band is already soulful, and Gladys vocals are already mature beyond her years, the song is full of Asian tropes and is racially offensive by todays standards. Anyhow despite the quality of the track, the single flopped anyways and the record went unnoticed. Brunswick kept The Pips on contract until 1959 before dropping them.
Once dropped by Brunswick, the Pips saw its first lineup change. Elenore and Brenda dropped out of the group to finish school, get married and start families, which is when another cousin, Edward Patton, joined The Pips, alongside another fourth Pip, Langston George, who had been performing with Edward in another group. In just a few years the kids had grown a lot older, and had developed a much richer sound and Gladys, now age 15, had emerged as both a sensational lead vocalist and beautiful young woman.
By 1961 things had seemed to have stalled out for The Pips, who were by that point were without a recording contract and working regular gigs at an Atlanta night club called The Builders Club, ran by a local businessman called “Fats” Hunter. Well, one night Pip got the kids together and told them that Hunter had just got some new recording equipment, and he wanted them to sing for him to “test it out.” The Pips went to the club and, when asked if they had any “original” material, they performed a song they had learnt about that previous summer when on tour called “With Every Beat of My Heart.” Written by blues writer Johnny Otis, who had become famous for co-writing “Hound Dog” for “Big Mama” Thorton, the song had been previously recorded by a vocal group called The Royals about nine years earlier but was still relatively unknown by the public. Fats Hunter laid down the track, and he sent the kids on their way who promptly forgot about it.
But, from that session, Hunter pressed the recording as one of the debut singles from his own label which he called Huntom Records and sent it out to Atlanta area radio stations. Well, the track started getting airplay and soon “Every Beat of Your Heart” was selling at local stores. Thing was, Hunter didn’t tell The Pips that he had done it and they only found out once classmates at their school told them that they had heard their song on the radio and saw the record in stores.
Quickly word of “Every Beat of My Heart” spread up to the Northern States, and representatives from Vee Jay Records in Chicago contacted Fats Hunter and offered him a big sum of money to buy the original recordings and give him a distribution deal for the song. Hunter sold them the rights, and now The Pips were getting national attention. But in the process, The Pips were being completely cut out of the deal. Without signing a contract of any kind to Hunter, they had no rights to the recording at all.
However, fortune would change for the kids when New York producer Bobby Robinson of Fury Records heard the track and learning The Pips were without any representation, travelled to Atlanta with his colleague Marshall Seahorn, to look at signing The Pips to his label. Meeting with Pip and Mama Knight, Robinson and Seahorn explained to them that “Every Beat of My Heart” was quickly ascending the charts and was going to be a hit, but that the kids were being cheated out of the profits and they wanted to turn that around. In the end, Pip and Mama left it up to the kids to decide if they wanted to be signed to Fury. The kids said yes, and soon The Pips were off to New York.
But the first order of business was to try to recover some proceeds from the success of “Every Beat of My Heart.” Robinson got The Pips to rerecord it on the Fury label but, to differentiate the new version from the Vee-Jay records single, Robinson suggested that the group now record as Gladys Knight and the Pips. This was the defining moment when Glady moved into the front, and the Pips became the backing vocal group. Well, the group didn’t have any sort of ego about this, and they agreed to the name change. In the end, they were all one family, and they were in it together. Thus, in 1961, as “Every Beat of Your Heart” climbed to the number one spot on the Billboard charts, three different labels – Huntom, Vee-Jay and Fury – were selling records featuring the song. In the end it was the Vee-Jay version that both sold most copies and rose to the number one spot, but the attention managed to bring the group to national fame, who could now start fresh at Fury under the updated moniker Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Despite having a number one single on the charts, the success of the single didn’t make Gladys Knight and the Pips instant overnight sensations. There would be some lean years, a breakup, a reunion and multiple label changes, with their peak years being with Motown and Buddha, as they rose to fame as one of the top soul acts in America. Gladys would eventually be known as the “Empress of Soul,” while the Pips became acclaimed for their smooth harmonies and slick choreography. Between 1962 and their break up in 1987, Glady Knight and the Pips released 28 solo albums, 22 top 20 Billboard Hits, won three Grammy Awards (including the unique feat of winning the awards for both Best Pop Group and Best R&B group in 1973), five American music awards and were inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
But at the core of their legacy was that, first and foremost, the group was family. It was the name of their musical legacy, which gave a group of kids from Atlanta a lifetime of success in the music industry. Music fans and record collectors will always celebrate the legacy of Gladys Knight, but without her Pips she’s just singing alone.
