At 75, soul singer Gladys Knight will proudly return to Australia

Gladys Knight has entertained since the glory days of 60s Motown but she continues to be uplifted by her audiences.

US soul singer Gladys Knight.

Gladys Knight doesn’t do nerves or butterflies. To the great US soul singer, stage fright is a concept so unfamiliar that it might as well be a foreign language. Yet in February this year, before she opened her mouth to perform the US national anthem, she had a moment that gave her pause.

As with many great artists, Knight’s music — and the extraordinary instrument she carries with her everywhere she goes — can be matched to meet an array of emotional needs: in times of celebration, in times of mourning and, perhaps especially, in divisive times, when unity is a scarce commodity.

So it was earlier this year when she accepted the challenging and unenviable task of performing The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, before a global television audience in excess of 100 million.

The US national anthem demands a wide vocal range from anyone attempting to do it justice. Many lesser singers have tried and failed, but for Knight, more difficult still was the way in which singing it — or choosing not to — had become politically polarising in recent years following NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to take a knee during the anthem as a silent protest against police brutality towards African-Americans.

“I’ll be very honest with you,” she tells Review on the phone from Washington. “I’m sure people from all around the world knew of the controversy that was surrounding that particular song. And actually, I’m very, very, very seldom nervous when I sing, or when I step on the stage, even if it’s for some political cause. I have a trust in the man ­upstairs that everything is going to be all right. But that still doesn’t calm you down inside.

“And so I just prayed about it, and I thought about it,” says Knight. “I called Mr (Kaepernick), and didn’t get a chance to speak directly with him, but I left a message (saying), ‘Whatever politically you’re involved with, this is not going against what you feel and what you want to say about it, because I’m in agreement with you. We’ve come a long way in this battle’.

“I had some people telling me, ‘Oh, don’t please don’t sing the national anthem’, and others who were saying, ‘I think you should do it!’,” she says with a laugh. “But when I send my (question) up there, and I get an answer back that that’s what I’m supposed to do … You got to have faith. And that’s what I did. I love my country. I’ve been singing this song since I was four years old. So whatever politics that they had going, I threw it away and I just sung it from my heart, and just went from there.”

Gladys Knight sings the US national anthem prior to Super Bowl in February. Picture: Getty Images

On that night in Atlanta in February, Knight began with a ­respectful bow before she opened her mouth. Dressed in white, with her short hair spiked skyward against a silver headpiece, the singer invested all of herself in a truly exceptional rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Across two minutes and four short stanzas, comprising words both deeply felt and beautifully enunciated, her reading of a song designed to unite a nation was the sort of performance that anyone who ever sung a note would be proud of.

It was yet another highlight within a long and decorated career. With the Pips — a soul group comprising a mix of Knight’s male cousins and siblings, whose voices provided a stirring ­accompaniment to her lead vocals — she recorded more than 20 albums across 37 years before pursuing a solo career in 1989, with her most recent album being 2014’s Where My Heart Belongs.

In August last year, Knight took to the stage at Aretha Franklin’s funeral in Detroit where her rousing, expansive performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Bridge Over Troubled Water were met with a standing ovation.

When Review connects with Knight, it’s the morning after the second annual Australian Women in Music Awards.

At the Brisbane Powerhouse, woman after impressive woman stepped on to the stage to accept their awards while stating they’re proud of their work even though that’s sometimes a hard thing to feel and publicly express in an industry that doesn’t ­always treat women with respect. Does that resonate with you, Ms Knight?

“You know, I have truly, truly been blessed throughout my time — I’ve been singing since I was four, and I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t respected,” she replies. “Of course, as I grew, my music got better, because I had a four-year-old voice at the beginning. I kept doing things that my mother would set before me, and the people that she set before me, teaching me, training my ears and how to dress, and a whole lot of things.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and, no, I haven’t really felt the strain of not being respected as a woman,” she says. “Now, they didn’t have to like all my music, and that’s OK, too, because music is a very personal thing. I just do what I feel and give you a piece of my spirit, and my life.”

 What about that concept of being proud of your life’s work and achievements — is that something that comes easily to you, Ms Knight?

“Yeah, I’m proud of the music that we do,” she replies. “And hopefully, that it will be in a form and in a line-up where it will just keep lifting them up and lifting them up as we go along. That’s the way I am about the music, and I’m grateful for the support that I’ve gotten over the years. Oh, my goodness — I never would have dreamed that.”

The singer recalls that on a recent tour through Europe, she was performing from festival stages where the crowd stretched into the distance, as far as she could see. “It looked like they were ants,” she says with a cackle. “But they had a ball, and they just lifted me up.”

It’s now more than six decades since Knight began performing in public, and through it all she has maintained a sense of gratitude at that notion of people choosing to take time out of their day — or night — to bear witness to her extraordinary body of work.

“From day one, if anybody showed up, I was always grateful,” she says. “The audiences that I’m (playing to) now, I’ve never seen anything like it before. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t say that this is the way it should be or anything like that. I’m always in awe of the people that come to my concert. And that’s very, very, very important to me.

“I have an equally important (job) to do because they have been so gracious to buy my music, and to lift up those songs to ­become really great songs,” she says. “You know, like Midnight Train to Georgia, Heard It Through The Grapevine, Licence to Kill — I mean, we have so many songs that they have just ­embraced, and shot it straight to the top, you know? I do sing the songs that touch my heart — because if I can’t believe it, I can’t make you believe it.”

Gladys Knight’s tour starts in Perth (February 4), followed by Sydney (February 6), Melbourne (February 8) and Brisbane (February 11).