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Gladys Knight & The Pips
Operator
Album: Soul Grooves
Genres: R&B
Pre-Motown Pippage from the early '60s, with young Gladys wailing her heart out over a Brill Building beat!

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	The soul music fan who only knows Gladys Knight & The Pips from their late-'60s/early-Seventies hits like "Midnight Train to Georgia" or "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" will be in for a bit of a surprise here. Recorded in the early '60s when the group was still on the Fury label, "Operator" is cut from the same Brill Building cloth as The Drifters' "There Goes My Baby" or The Crystals' "He's A Rebel" -- lotsa booming drums, swirling strings and a sense of drama that borders on the ridiculous. Seems that young Gladys can't get through to her boyfriend's phone (this being a good fifteen years before call waiting), leading her to the supremely logical conclusion that the guy must be busy chatting up another girl. Gladys' powerful voice is very much in evidence here, and she wails as if her very heart is about to pop out of her chest. She's still a few years off from developing the warmth and personality that would mark her best work, but this is still a nifty slice of forgotten soul.

	*Dan Epstein*
	Dan Epstein is a Los Angeles-based journalist and pop-culture historian whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, BAM, Raygun, Guitar World and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. His first book, Twentieth Century Pop Culture, was published in 1999 by Carlton Books.