Gladys Knight has recorded a phenomenal 36 albums as lead singer with The Pips and a solo artist over the last half century, notching up 29 Top 10 R&B hits in her home country, with a mammoth 10 of them hitting the top spot. In the UK, she’s been every bit as successful with a career that has spawned 22 Top 50 singles including the gloriously sultry Help Me Make It Through The Night, the poignant Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye) and the 1967 original version of the Marvin Gaye hit, I Heard It Through The Grapevine. “It was such an honour, when Marvin chose to cover it,” Gladys explains. “Alongside my mother, Stevie Wonder and Big Maybelle, he was one of my mentors.” Gladys Knight has also collaborated with such soul luminaries as Curtis Mayfield, on his 1974 Claudine soundtrack, and Dionne Warwick on her AIDS charity single, That’s What Friends Are For. She’s starred in the 1976 film Pipe Dreams, the US sitcoms Charlie & Co and Benson and in 2003 she appeared in the musical, Smokey Joe’s Café on Broadway and released her most recent and first solo LP in six years, *At Last. Her gutsy, expressive gospel tones have, unsurprisingly, inspired a whole host of younger singers including Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Maxwell, D’Angelo and Des’Ree and her recordings for the Motown label from which this superb compilation is culled sound as exhilarating today as they did back in the late ’60s and early ’70s when they were first recorded and added variation to what became known as the Sound Of Young America.