{"id":39305,"date":"1999-08-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-08-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/claudine\/"},"modified":"1999-08-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1999-08-23T00:00:00","slug":"claudine","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/claudine\/","title":{"rendered":"Claudine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chances are, if you’re like me, the extent of your knowledge of
\nGladys Knight & The Pips is hearing songs like “I Heard It
\nThrough The Grapevine” and “Midnight Train To Georgia” on the
\nradio. I still vaguely remember seeing Knight on “The Muppet Show”
\nwhen I was a kid. But until I got a promotional copy of the
\nre-released soundtrack from the 1974 film
\nClaudine<\/i>, I didn’t own a single record from this group. (The
\nPierce Memorial Archive might be vast, but it’s not perfect.)<\/p>\n

Chances are that you’ve never heard of this movie; I know I
\nhadn’t. In an age of African-American films coming to the forefront
\nof society, this film has been called a realistic portrait of life
\nand love in Harlem in the ’70s. (I haven’t seen the film, and from
\nwhat I’ve been led to believe, it’s not out on video. Check out
\nThe Internet Movie
\nDatabase<\/a> for the inside skinny on the film.)<\/p>\n

What I can say that I wasn’t ready for was hearing Knight &
\nThe Pips perform music whose lyrical content was much rawer than
\nthe happier-sounding material you’d find on the radio. (I know full
\nwell that “Midnight Train To Georgia” is not a happy song, but even<\/p>\n

that<\/i> song doesn’t fully prepare you for this soundtrack.)
\nIt’s a bit of an adjustment, and it will take several listens
\nbefore this starts to sound natural. But seeing the disc clocks in
\nat just over a half-hour in length, repeat listens should be no
\ntrouble.<\/p>\n

Two tracks on
\nClaudine<\/i> stand out for me. The first, “Make Yours A Happy
\nHome,” is the track that closes the album and signifies the first
\ntrue hope on the album; for all the trouble that the family went
\nthrough to this point in the movie, this is the song that is
\nsupposed to suggest that things are finally looking up for the
\ntitle character. As a single, it’s decent, but I tend to prefer the
\nalbum’s opener, “Mr. Welfare Man,” a song which is more bleak in
\nits outlook.<\/p>\n

One other track, “On And On,” is cited many times by people who
\nhave seen the movie, but while it was okay, I didn’t see anything
\nabout it that wanted me to single it out for special mention. Then
\nagain, when there are only seven tracks on the whole album, you
\ncan’t help but talk about all the songs at some point.<\/p>\n

I think what sets these songs apart from anything else that
\nKnight & The Pips did was that they were all written by Curtis
\nMayfield, the same person who gave us “Superfly” and “Freddie’s
\nDead”. Had Mayfield not written the lyrics, I think the music might
\nnot have been as dark as it is. I also think that some of the
\nmusic’s power would have been lost, so even though it takes a
\nlittle time to get used to hearing Knight singing about subjects
\nshe normally didn’t lend her voice to, in the end, I think having
\nMayfield as the songwriter works better.<\/p>\n

In this age of special editions and bonus tracks, I kind of find
\nit hard to believe that there weren’t any leftovers from these
\nsessions that they couldn’t have thrown on to pad
\nClaudine<\/i> a little bit. I mean, a half-hour album is
\nincredibly short, even if it lends itself easier to repeat
\nlistens.<\/p>\n

So should you get
\nClaudine<\/i> and add it to your collection? If you’re a fan of
\nKnight & The Pips or you like movies of this genre, I’m willing
\nto bet you already own this CD. If you want to hear more of Knight
\nthan what you get on the radio, this is a definite candidate for
\nyou – but be willing to give up some time to listen to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7535],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39305","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gladys-knight-the-pips","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39305"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39305"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}