Review: R&B legends Gladys Knight and the O'Jays avoid the expected in Grand Prairie

Gladys Knight and the O'Jays have been cranking out their R&B classics for so long they'd be forgiven if they performed every show on autopilot. But that wasn't the case Sunday night at Verizon Theatre, where they teamed up for a concert that was charmingly loose and unpredictable.

Billed as co-headliners, the acts alternate who opens each night of this tour. On this eve, Knight kicked things off and got right down to business, uncorking a long operatic note followed by a guttural, James Brown-style "Owww!" At 71, she's still got a strong voice -- with a few rough edges, sure, but her singing was so warm and soulful during "The Way We Were," it made you forget the song belongs to Babs.

The longer Knight was onstage, the looser she got. Talkative and silly, she ad-libbed about losing her earring -- she made her guitarist pick it up, saying "I can't afford to lose any more of these!" -- chatted with a few particularly loud fans and ranted about real love versus the pseudo-love people deliver today via text message.

At times, she was a bit too verbose, especially when the talking came smack dab in the middle of her version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." But she was more to the point on most of her hits, from the hard soul of "I've Got to Use My Imagination" to the sweet, gospel-tinged "I Don't Want to Do Wrong" to her signature song, "Midnight Train to Georgia."

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Along the way, she found time to cover Sam Smith's "Stay With Me," the Jacksons' "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" and then bring out her brother (and former Pip) Merald "Bubba" Knight for four minutes of furious dancing and singing. Knight may have split with the Pips 27 years ago, but for one brief moment, it felt like the dawn of the 1970s all over again.

The O'Jays showed off some impressive footwork, too, especially for guys in their early 70s who don't look like they cross-train nearly as much as Mick Jagger. But the real revelation was their still-tight vocal harmonies and the lean Afro-Latin grooves in "Back Stabbers" and "I Love Music."

Like Knight, the O'Jays were too garrulous at times. The long, comic bedroom whispering in the middle of "Cry Together" wound up killing the mood, and the bit where band members mock-squabbled with each other was purely a time-killer.

But Eddie Levert's long, ad-libbed intro about the power of brotherly love in a world gone insane was the perfect segue for their enduring "Love Train." With its lyrics about the need to spread peace in Russia, Africa and the Middle East, "Love Train" is sadly just as relevant today as it was in 1972.

Thor Christensen is a Dallas writer and critic.