Gladys Knight & The Pips - If I Were Your Woman & Standing Ovation (2006)

Another installment in Motown's excellent reissue campaign of Gladys Knight & the Pips full-length recordings, this edition combines 1971's excellent If I Were Your Woman with Standing Ovation. "If I Were Your Woman" is one of the group's finest moments, with a vocal performance by Knight that has few rivals in the soul music world. The rest of the album, much like a large percentage of Standing Ovation, is made up of filler tunes and cover versions that are curiosities for die-hard fans only. At times the group makes a concerted effort to take a song and give it a unique spin (a cover of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" is especially noteworthy), but there are other times when the experiment flat-out fails (the "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"/"Bridge Over Troubled Water" medley, for example).