At Flamingo, the sun never sets on Knight

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 8:45 a.m.

As Gladys Knight sings in "You're the Best Thing That's Ever Happened to Me," she has had her share of life's ups and downs.

Her show at Flamingo Las Vegas is one of the ups.

It has been almost 34 years since Gladys Knight and the Pips first performed at the Flamingo, when they were part of the Motown stable that included such legends as Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Temptations and Marvin Gaye.

It was the group's first showroom in Las Vegas.

The Pips are gone, but Knight's dominating presence is still with us, much to the delight of her legion of fans.

The 58-year-old pop and R&B artist grabs the audience by the heart from the moment she steps onstage, and doesn't let go until the final song.

Knight has learned a thing or two about pleasing fans since making her solo debut at age 4 in the Mount Mariah Baptist Church in her native Atlanta. (She began singing professionally at the age of 8).

Among her mentors was Sammy Davis Jr., to whom she pays homage during a brilliant performance that leaves fans begging for more.

"Sammy taught me how to embrace an audience," Knight says.

And he taught her to make each song she sings her own.

As an example, she sang Davis' hit "Candy Man," and you would have thought it had been written for her.

She also took a country song and made it her own -- "Please Help Me I'm Falling (in Love with You)."

There was no mistaking her for Eddie Arnold.

"This has become one of my favorite songs," Knight said, as she demonstrated there may be a fine line between country and R&B. "I love country music. Most of the songs you made popular for us were country songs."

Whether its R&B, country, gospel, soul or standards, Knight performs them all with equal ease and conviction.

"I hate to be pigeonholed," she said to a near-capacity crowd. "Don't tell me I can't sing that song because I don't live over there. Don't tell me I can't sing this song because I don't dress like this, or look like that -- just let me do the music."

They did and she did and it was a wonderful night of entertainment that, even at 90 minutes, sped by too quickly.

Knight's outstanding performance was greatly enhanced by a seven-piece band and four backup singers, who took the spotlight in the middle of the show to perform a medley of Motown hits by an assortment of artists. Among the classics were "My Girl" and "I've Got Sunshine" (both by The Temptations), "Stop in the Name of Love" (Diana Ross and the Supremes) and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" (Gaye).

Also joining Knight was her brother Bubba (Merald Knight), a founding member of the Pips.

While Bubba is a fine entertainer in his own right (Davis' "Mr. Bojangles" was superb and of Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapefine" was fun), the repartee between he and his sister is the only slow spot of the evening.

But it is good to have Bubba in the show, if nothing else as comic relief as he leads the audience in "Who Let the Dogs Out" and as a nod to the Pips, who were so much a part of Gladys Knight's career until she went solo in 1989.

Together, Gladys Knight and the Pips won three Grammies: two in 1973, in the R& B category for "Midnight Train to Georgia" and the Pop category for "Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye)") and one in 1988 in the R&B category for "Love Overboard."

In 2001, Knight won her first Grammy as a solo artist, for the R&B album "At Last."

That was a high point in a life that has had a number of lows in recent years -- her son, Jimmy Newman, died of pneumonia in 1999 at age 36; her brother Billy, 55, died in December after suffering a heart attack; and her niece, rising R&B star Aaliyah, 21, was killed in a plane crash in August 2001.

Knight seems to gain strength from her music and from her fans, who have been filling the Flamingo showroom since her arrival a year ago.

Hopefully, the Flamingo will be her power source for a long time to come.