Alex Henderson

Gladys Knight & the Pips
I Feel a Song [Expanded Edition]

In 1974, Gladys Knight & the Pips knew that 1973’s Imagination—which was their first album for Buddah Records after seven years at Motown—would be a darn tough act to follow. Certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of more than 500,000 units in the United States alone, Imagination boasted no less than three #1 R&B hits (“Midnight Train to Georgia,” “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”) and soared to #1 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart. “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which became the group’s signature song, was also a #1 pop single in Billboard. The Empress of Soul and her three Pips (brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins Edward Patten and William Guest) had enjoyed their share of major hits at Motown and were closely identified with the Motown sound, but Imagination not only performed as well as their Motown albums—it managed to outperform them and became their most successful album ever. So when the time came for Gladys Knight (b. May 28, 1944), Merald “Bubba” Knight (b. September 4, 1942), William Guest (b. July 2, 1941) and the late Edward Patten (b. August 27, 1939, d. February 25, 2005) to record some follow-up albums, expectations ran high at Buddah.

Two Gladys Knight & the Pips albums were released by Buddah in 1974: the soundtrack for the movie Claudine (which was produced and written by the late soul icon Curtis Mayfield) and I Feel a Song.  While Claudine was Gladys Knight & the Pips’ first post-Imagination album, I Feel a Song was their first post-Imagination album that wasn’t a soundtrack. And both Claudine and I Feel a Song reached #1 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart. At Buddah, Gladys Knight & the Pips had three #1 R&B albums in a row, which was something they never accomplished at Motown. When they signed with Buddah in 1973, Gladys Knight & the Pips were promised a much more aggressive promotional campaign than they had received at Motown—and Buddah clearly came through for them.

I Feel a Song contained three major hits: the dramatic title song (a #1 R&B single in Billboard), the optimistic ballad “Love Finds Its Own Way” (which climbed to #3 R&B in Billboard) and a poignant medley of Marvin Hamlisch and Alan & Marilyn Bergman’s theme song from the 1973 movie “The Way We Were” (starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford) and Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’ “Try to Remember” (made famous in the musical comedy “The Fantasticks”). Instead of trying to emulate the original Streisand version, Knight and her Pips took “The Way We Were” in a different direction and gave their remake both soul appeal and pop/adult contemporary appeal. And the medley’s performance on Billboard’s singles charts reflected that: “The Way We Were”/“Try to Remember” reached #6 R&B, #11 pop and #2 adult contemporary in Billboard.  But I Feel a Song is impressive not only because of its singles—the album also has plenty of memorable performances that weren’t big radio hits.  Knight turns up the funk on “Better You Go Your Way” (a Bill Withers song) and Ron Miller’s “Don’t Burn Down the Bridge” (which was the b-side of the “Love Finds Its Own Way” 45), and she shows how expressive a ballad singer she can be on Withers’ “Tenderess Is His Way,” Jim Weatherly’s “The Need to Be” and Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach’s “Seconds.” If Knight’s performance on “Seconds” reminds the listener of Dionne Warwick’s early recordings, that is no coincidence: Bacharach and his partner Hal David wrote many of the songs that became hits for Warwick in the 1960s, including “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Walk On By.”

Knight (who turned 30 in 1974) and her Pips perform three songs by soft rock/adult contemporary singer Jim Weatherly on I Feel a Song: “Love Finds Its Own Way,” “The Need to Be” and the mid-tempo “The Going Ups and the Coming Downs.” The group had very good luck performing Weatherly’s songs in the 1970s: his melancholy ballad “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” was a #1 R&B/#2 pop hit for Gladys Knight & the Pips in early 1973 and was their last major hit at Motown. And three of the smash hits from Imagination—“Midnight Train to Georgia,” “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” and “Where Peaceful Waters Flow”—were Weatherly songs. Weatherly, in fact, wrote five of the nine songs that appeared on the original Imagination LP back in 1973. And when “Love Finds Its Own Way” became a #3 R&B hit, Weatherly’s songwriting continued to serve the group well.

FunkyTownGrooves’ expanded 2013 edition of I Feel a Song contains eight bonus tracks, one of which is the 7” single version of “The Way We Were”/“Try to Remember.” Also offered as bonus tracks are the 7” single versions of two hits from the “Claudine” soundtrack: the funky “On and On” and the vibrant “Make Yours a Happy Home,” both of which were written and produced by Curtis Mayfield. “On and On” was a #2 R&B/#5 pop hit, while “Make Yours a Happy Home” performed moderately well and reached #13 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart—although it didn’t become a single until 1976. Buddah, making an unusual move, waited two years to choose “Make Yours a Happy Home” as a single, and by that time, both I Feel a Song and 1975’s 2nd Anniversary had achieved gold status. At Buddah, Gladys Knight & the Pips had four gold albums in a row: Imagination, Claudine, I Feel a Song and 2^nd Anniversary.

Emphasizing how well Gladys Knight & the Pips did at Buddah is not to take anything away from their Motown output. The group recorded more than their share of classics for Berry Gordy’s R&B powerhouse. But at Buddah, they became even more popular—and I Feel a Song went down in history as an album that was both a creative success and a commercial success for Gladys Knight & the Pips.

—Alex Henderson, September 2013

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Creem, The L.A. Weekly, JazzTimes, Jazziz, Salon.com, AlterNet, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, Latin Style, The New York City Jazz Record and many other well-known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) has also contributed several thousand CD reviews to The All Music Guide’s popular website and series of music reference books.