Gladys Knight Says Sammy Davis Jr. Showed Her How To Command A Stage

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight credits her mentor Sammy Davis Jr. with turning her from a small-time singer into the kind of powerhouse entertainer who can silence Madison Square Garden with her voice.

"Sammy actually taught me how to do a ballad," Knight told the Daily News' Jennifer H. Cunningham behind the scenes at the the McDonald's 365Black Awards at the New Orleans Theater, before she scooped her gong. The awards show was filmed during the Essence Festival, and airs next month on BET.

When Knight was just an up-and-coming singer with the Pips, she and her group toured with Davis. “Sammy just took us under his arms,” said the great-grandmother of five. Knight, 69, recently appeared on season 14 of “Dancing With the Stars,” where she gamely fox-trotted and salsa-danced her way into viewers’ hearts.

But the music legend wasn’t always so confident in front of a live audience.

“I was on stage one night,” Knight recalls of her days touring with Davis, “and I was trying to do ‘The Way We Were.’ And it’s his audience, a more mature audience, and we were the opening act. So when we come on, they’re a little restless, and they’ll politely applaud. But you want more than that.”

Enter Sammy, the smooth-talkin’ sandman.

After Davis gave Knight instructions on how to captivate an audience — by sitting on a stool, speaking softer and softer, until someone would say “Ssh!” and everyone was straining to hear — everything changed for her.

“That moment on, I did it the next show, and you could hear a pin fall in there, because I just started talking [softly],” Knight told us. “Before you know it, people started saying, ‘Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!’ Until people got quiet, and then I could come to my regular voice, because they were attentive to me. ... I started getting standing ovations. I could do an intimate song like that, and I did Madison Square Garden and everyone stood up.”

Knight also took a subtle swipe at contemporary artists like Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, who grab crowds’ attention by lingering on notes.

“It’s not just about a run and how much you can run a note,” Knight says. “It gets old after a while, because you’re not painting a picture, you’re just showing somebody you know how to run.”


You hear that b!tches! Paint me a f**king picture or bust a move




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