‘I’m telling y’ all my business,” quips Gladys Knight, pinpointing part of her appeal. For an hour and a half, the empress of soul pours her heart and voice into songs that span the spectrum of human emotion. “There was rain in my heart for a long time, so this is personal for me,” she says.
She is 78, but 13 years after her so-called “farewell” tour, looks fantastic in a sparkling outfit. And her voice remains outstanding. Her first extended note triggers the first of several spontaneous standing ovations.
Few performers have such a warm rapport with their audience. “You may not know me personally but you’re all my friends,” she tells us. “She’s incredible,” mutters the lady to my left, while numerous others film whole songs on their phones.
The setlist offers a career overview. The 1969 Motown single The Nitty Gritty segues into the Jackson 5’s Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) – it was Knight, after all, who urged the label to sign them. Gladys Knight and the Pips also recorded I Heard It Through the Grapevine before her friend Marvin Gaye, while You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me and Baby Don’t Change Your Mind epitomise slinky, pre-disco 70s soul.
M-People surely cribbed from 1978’s Come Back and Finish What You Started, while 1989’s Licence to Kill is a stellar Bond theme. Signature hit Midnight Train to Georgia, unaffected by rail disputes, has a sprightly new arrangement.
An audience singalong of Hey Jude marks Paul McCartney’s birthday, although the show could perhaps lose the similar treatment of Queen’s We Are the Champions. Knight has enough treasure in her own catalogue, and her touching delivery of the Jim Weatherly-penned Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye), about a couple “living a lie”, brings the house down.
There’s a lovely moment during The Way We Were. “If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we…?” sings Knight, which prompts someone in the audience to instantly fire back, “Hell, yes!”
• At Birmingham Symphony Hall, 19 June, then touring until 30 June.
