Gladys Knight and the Pips Ed Sullivan appearance.....?

[DWSheffer]

Does anyone remember Gladys and the Pips ever singing "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother / Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the Ed Sullivan Show? I did some research online and could not find where they had. Reason I'm asking: I bought another group of items that belonged to Maurice King that the Detroit seller recently discovered had been separated from the large group I purchased last year. While the majority was sheet music and a group of 20 pieces of Maurice's wardrobe, some personalized, there was one more reel to reel tape. The first 30 seconds was blank, and I was worried there was nothing on it. But then Maurice comes on and says "Rehearsal for the Ed Sullivan Show", and then proceeds to tell them all to get closer to his tape recorder. Unlike most of the other tapes I acquired where it's just Maurice on the piano rehearsing with the artists, this one has more instruments present and sounds really good. It's a whole side of a 7-1/2 IPS reel of them rehearsing the previously mentioned song. I was glad that the last tape I'll get from this archive was Motown related, as not all of them were in the original group of 40 reels that I acquired.
Thanks for any comments,
Darin

[reese]

They sang IF I WERE YOUR WOMAN and BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER on the last episode of the Ed Sullivan Show.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Does anyone remember Gladys and the Pips ever singing "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother / Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the Ed Sullivan Show? I did some research online and could not find where they had. Reason I'm asking: I bought another group of items that belonged to Maurice King that the Detroit seller recently discovered had been separated from the large group I purchased last year. While the majority was sheet music and a group of 20 pieces of Maurice's wardrobe, some personalized, there was one more reel to reel tape. The first 30 seconds was blank, and I was worried there was nothing on it. But then Maurice comes on and says "Rehearsal for the Ed Sullivan Show", and then proceeds to tell them all to get closer to his tape recorder. Unlike most of the other tapes I acquired where it's just Maurice on the piano rehearsing with the artists, this one has more instruments present and sounds really good. It's a whole side of a 7-1/2 IPS reel of them rehearsing the previously mentioned song. I was glad that the last tape I'll get from this archive was Motown related, as not all of them were in the original group of 40 reels that I acquired.
Thanks for any comments,
Darin

Hi Darin. I have a question; I've been checking eBay off and on and it seems the era of finding truly rare Motown memorabilia has evaporated. Was your recent find on ebay? I also use Worthpoint but that usually ends up right back at eBay.

[motony]

I seem to remember that they did that & a medley of their hits shortly before they left Motown."Neither One of Us...." was their latest [[and last Motown).

[DWSheffer]

Thanks for the leads....I sure wish I could find it on Youtube. So far I haven't been successful in doing so.

[DWSheffer]

Waiting, I completely agree the chances of finding rarer Motown items on Ebay is all but nonexistent. Not to say the occasional nugget doesn't come up every once in a while, but they're few and far between.

The acquisition of the King archive did originate through Ebay, although the true scope of it wasn't described in any detail. In February of 2021 the seller listed a set of handwritten scores for "Heat Wave" along with a check signed by Maurice and an internal Motown memo report sent to Artist Development critiquing Martha and the Vandellas' performance at the Roostertail in September of 1966. At any rate, in the description was a brief mention, "from a storage locker in which numerous Maurice King treasures of Motown were found", which obviously piqued my interest. I contacted the seller and arrangements were finally made for me to drive up to Detroit and take a look at what he had and a deal was made in May of 2021. The seller contacted me a few weeks ago and said he had found another 30 pounds of paper items, as well as the clothing, so we made a deal on this group as well. As I've said before I'm lucky to be somewhat near Detroit, but I sure wish I lived closer and could actively seek this stuff out. When I met Paul Riser at Duke's book signing, I told him how I recently acquired Lamont's gold record for "I Can't Help Myself". He sighed and said "yeah, I lost all my gold records in a storage unit sale years ago". I think the stuff is still out there, but unfortunately it just doesn't seem to show up on the collector's market.

When I first posted about my acquisition of the King archive I said I would share some of it with the forum. I still plan on doing so, hopefully soon, at least the ephemeral items. The amount of actual Motown era material was small in comparison with the overall size of the group, but I am happy with what I acquired, especially on the reel to reels. The majority of the group was pre and post Motown, from his years leading the Wolverines to the days of being music director for the Spinners.
Darin

[carlo]

Wow, you've been on a roll with finding some very interesting items, DWSheffer. Congrats! This Gladys Knight and the Pips rehearsal sounds very interesting. I would also be curious to know what the internal artist development memo regarding the Martha & the Vandellas Roostertail performance says. Or perhaps you have shared that already on this forum? I'm having a deja vu moment :)

As for finding the Ed Sullivan footage, it's likely that the official Ed Sullivan YouTube channel will post that performance eventually. They have been slowly but surely going through their archives and uploading footage. I just wish they would do it a little quicker :)

[reese]

https://www.edsullivan.com/artists/gladys-knight-and-the-pips/

[DWSheffer]

Thanks Reese! That's helpful. I do hope as Carlo stated that they will eventually upload the "Bridge" performance as well.

Carlo, I will plan on sharing the internal memo soon under the original thread when I announced my acquisition of the archive. I figured I would like to try and keep everything under that thread in the case anyone is researching Maurice in the future, it will all be in one place.
Darin

[motown01]

Here are all of their songs from that episode - https://streamable.com/uk9n2h

It's a shame this isn't on YouTube.

[carlo]

Here are all of their songs from that episode - https://streamable.com/uk9n2h

It's a shame this isn't on YouTube.

Hey my friend, thank you for sharing this! I don't think I had seen the first performance of Bridge Over Troubled Water before. Fantastic.

[DWSheffer]

Thank you for posting the link to the "Bridge" performance! It's too bad some of this stuff is so hard to track down, I couldn't find it anywhere. It makes me wonder with the time that it would take for them to sing the "He Ain't Heavy/Bridge" song, that they shortened the performance to just sing "Bridge" instead?

[reese]

Thank you for posting the link to the "Bridge" performance! It's too bad some of this stuff is so hard to track down, I couldn't find it anywhere. It makes me wonder with the time that it would take for them to sing the "He Ain't Heavy/Bridge" song, that they shortened the performance to just sing "Bridge" instead?

They probably only had a certain amount of time for their spot. If you notice, they didn't perform the last verse of IF I WERE YOUR WOMAN either.

[PeaceNHarmony]

Wonderful performances to see again. GA&tP always killed it on TV.