Love Finds Its Own Way - The Best of Gladys Knight & the Pips

Soul music grew up with Gladys Knight’s voice, and Love Finds Its Own Way follows it through three decades and four labels of R&B artistry. The first two tracks, “Every Beat of My Heart” and “Letter Full of Tears,” are two early hits recorded for Vee-Jay back when the group was simply known as The Pips. Of course, the Pips wouldn’t really blossom until they joined Motown in 1965, helping to guide the label from the teenage beats of “I Heard It Through the Grapvine” to the adult themes of “Neither One of Us (Wants To Be the First to Say Goodbye).” The Pips found their greatest success with Buddah, where they recorded the classic “Midnight Train To Georgia,” an elegant-but-no-frills ballad. The hidden gem, however, is “On and On,” a song written and produced by Curtis Mayfield for the 1974 film Claudine. When “Save the Overtime (For Me)” and “Hero (Wind Beneath My Wings)” climbed the charts in 1983, Knight had become a soul music matriarch, her weathered, impassioned voice an anchor for any band she worked with. Few voices in soul music have remained as tender, trustworthy, and truthful.