Why was Gladys Knight’s band called The Pips?
What’s in a name? Within the realm of band names, often not very much.
While some groups have incredibly profound names with hidden meanings and references to classic literature or ancient history, others are merely concocted to be as memorable and marketable as humanly possible, and that latter method was the one preferred by Motown Records during its heyday.
Creating hit records was always the prevailing goal of Motown boss Berry Gordy, going back to his pre-Tamla days as a budding Detroit music mogul, and it is fair to say that he was pretty successful in achieving that goal. Amassing well over 100 top ten hits during its 1960s golden age in the US alone, Hitsville USA boasted an unparalleled grasp on the American pop charts and launched a plethora of utterly iconic artists in the process.
While there was never any shortage of incredible solo artists at Motown, spanning the spectrum from Mary Wells to Marvin Gaye, the bread and butter of the label was always its groups. It was, after all, The Marvelettes who earned Gordy his first number-one hit with ‘Please Mr Postman’ in 1961, and a wealth of similarly hopeful vocal groups certainly seemed to follow in their wake.
Every self-respecting Motown obsessive has their own take on the greatest Motown group, whether it’s the pioneering psychedelic-soul of The Temptations, the soulful mastery of the Four Tops, and the sheer hit-power of The Supremes. The latter outfit certainly became Gordy’s flagship outfit during the 1960s, amassing more hit records than anybody else on the Motown roster, prompting the label boss to sign up a multitude of other groups, including Gladys Knight and the Pips.
But where did ‘The Pips’ come from?
Unlike much of the label’s roster, when The Pips signed to Motown in 1966, they already boasted a semi-successful recording career with Brunswick Records beginning in the late 1950s. Essentially, this meant that Gordy’s typical policy of renaming new Motown signings to make them more marketable – The Supremes, for instance, had been called the Primettes when they initially signed with Motown – wasn’t possible, as The Pips had already had a few hits here and there.
Even still, Gladys Knight and the Pips doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Particularly in comparison to their fellow Motown stars, the band name is long and doesn’t seem to make much sense. Aside from anything else, what actually is a pip: the part of the apple that nobody eats, a device to make counting easier, or high-pitched radio signals? None of those things seem to have much connection to Motown or its star power.
Fittingly, since The Pips were a family band originally composed of the three Knight siblings along with a handful of their cousins, the band name itself is also rooted in their family connections. The story goes that, way back in 1952, when they first got together, the relatives selected the name ‘The Pips’ as a result of their cousin, James ‘Pip’ Woods, who managed the band during their early years, leading them to various talent show successes.
Although it isn’t exactly clear how Woods himself got given that rather strange nickname, it seemed to stick with Gladys Knight and the gang, soon becoming an iconic band name from Motown’s golden age, splashed across various legendary hit singles, despite being, in all honesty, a rather odd band name.
Still, I suppose it’s no worse than Three Ounces of Love, The Valadiers, or Nick and the Jaguars, all of which found themselves on the Motown label at one point or another.
