Records

RECORDS

Gladys Knight and the Pips, "I Peel A Song, " Buddah BDS 5612

Like the single flower growing in the desert on the cover, of her new album, Gladys Knight continues to blossom in the midst of what can get to be a pretty arid scene. Her astounding talent is all the more evident since her departure from Motown - she is a diamond but they treated her like glass - and 1 think few would disagree with me that, along with Aretha Franklin and Esther Phillips, she is perhaps the pre-eminent R&B vocalist today.

On "I Feel A Song," the emphasis is on ballads. She gives a couple of Jim "Midnight Train To Georgia" Weatherly's tunes better treatment than they deserve and manages to make "The Way We Were" slightly more palatable than did Barbra Streisand despite the schmaltz Gladys lards onto the introduction of this live cut.

There are, however, three tunes fine, fast and funky and they make it all worthwhile for this dancer. The title cut is Gladys as hot as she gets, dealing with the same theme the Manhattans scored with last year in "Doin' Fine Without You". She teams up with Bill Withers on his tune "Better You Go Your Way" which features some tasty anonymous guitar frills. And "Don't Burn Down The Bridge" cooks solid straight through.

Incidentally, the Pips are in fine voice throughout, making flashy good use, as usual, of each brief opportunity to punctuate Gladys' impassioned declamations, and the sound quality throughout is very high. Gladys' special talent is to make you feel the high song in your heart and she does that here more often than not.

-Bill Adler

Steven Grossman
Steven Grossman, “Caravan Tonight,” Mercury SRM 1-702

Steven is the first gay male voice to land a major label record contract. First, to clear up some confusion, this is neither the Stefan Grossman who played with Miles Davis, nor the folkie traditionalist who’s recorded for various esoteric folk labels. This Grossman is a New York..

…of condemning it soundly:

   All this boozing and cruising does nothing more
   Than to give me a pain in my song
   And dancing halls and bathroom stalls
   Aren’t where I belong…