Asheville, N.C. — It is much too easy to take Gladys Knight for granted.

Her sound is so pure, her steps so graceful, her smile so disarming that the vocal powerhouse’s sheer presence seems at once natural and divine. Wrapped in a magenta turtleneck, she tells the handsome waiter pouring her iced tea that he “should be in the movies” before launching into a humble story about how she discovered Michael Jackson. As the Atlanta native peppers her sentences with y’all and fussin’, she makes it easy to forget that she is the prototype.

And did you catch her Verzuz song catalogue “battle” in 2020 with fellow diva Patti LaBelle? The pair sat next to one another kiki-ing like the real besties they are and delivered full-throttle hits like it was nothing. The moment, both surreal and live-streamed in your living room, was so very Gladys. Real. Unfussy.

“It was always love,” LaBelle says of Knight. “She’s one of the best entertainers out there and with one of the best hearts. She’s laid-back. I love the way she rolls. She’s just everything.”

Because of that effortless energy and the fact that Knight has been expertly weaving together harmonies since she was 4, the impact of her talent — a gift she says comes from “Him” while pointing to the ceiling of this fancy hotel restaurant not far from her home in North Carolina — can still catch her off guard.

“Me? Who you talking about? Me?” Knight, 78, asks with genuine awe while discussing her recent Kennedy Center Honors recognition for a career that spans seven decades and seven times as many hits. From the 1960s onward, her voice poured the foundation of the era’s sound — “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “Neither One of Us” and more.

At Knight’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, Mariah Carey described her as a “singer’s singer.”

The accolades still shock her. “When they call your name like that, it really lifts you up,” says Knight.

For more than 40 years, Knight performed with her big brother, Merald “Bubba” Knight Jr., and cousins William Guest and Edward Patten as Gladys Knight & the Pips. She had the voice, the guys had the moves, and they all looked good while doing it. And while the group was a family affair, the name being called first always belonged to Gladys.

Gladys’ big break came in 1952, when as a young girl she appeared on “The Original Amateur Hour,” the “American Idol” of its time, hosted by Ted Mack.Knight’s application for the show noted that she possessed an “unusual voice for” a 7-year-old — so unusual that she would go on to win the top prize and the $2,000 hat came with it.

Gladys’ mother persuaded her daughter Brenda, son Bubba and their cousins William and Eleanor Guest to form a quintet with Knight. Another cousin, James Woods, whom everybody called Pip, managed the group and dubbed them the Pips.

For the next decade, when they weren’t singing in church, the family troupe performed throughout Atlanta.

For Knight and the Pips, who would eventually slim down to just Bubba, William Guest and Patten, growing up happened out on the road. The family “had built us up and raised us to a point; you don’t get away from that,” Knight says.

By the time the Pips got to Motown Records, the Black musical Shangri-La founded by Berry Gordy, it was 1966 and Knight, then 22, had been married for six years and had two young children to raise. The group had a string of Top 40 hits and several singles with other record companies. Motown was not on Knight’s vision board.

“I did not want to go,” Knight says. “Oh no. It’s too much mess over there.” But the Pips outvoted her. This was Motown after all: the home of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes. It was that last headliner that Knight was worried about.

Knight knew Gordy wanted Ross’s name in lights. “I’m not jealous. I been here years before you got here,” she thought. What she wanted was a lane of her own.

The group’s time at the company produced the monster hit “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and the Grammy-winning “Neither One of Us.” But despite the demonstrable success, she still never felt appreciated or particularly heard.

At Buddah Records, the group would record its magnum opus, 1973’s “Midnight Train to Georgia.” The record won the group another Grammy in 1974 and catapulted them — after 20 years together — into the stratosphere. Over the course of their career, they would eventually score 10 Grammy nominations in total and take home three statues; Knight also won four of her own. But all wasn’t gold.

The singer went solo in 1988 after the release of the group’s final album, which featured the hit “Love Overboard.” After performing with three guys behind her for four decades, the decision to strike out on her own was surprisingly not fraught for Knight, who by then had been divorced twice, was raising three children and battling a gambling addiction. Being out front and by herself was, in fact, familiar road.

“No, I was on my own a long time,” she says. Infighting was wearing her down. “I just got fed up with it. I ain’t have no problem getting rid of them at all.” Not Bubba, though. They were still “two peas in a pod.” She thought the two of them could have made a great duet. But that didn’t happen. Still, when he stands offstage watching his lsister sing, Bubba is transported by that voice.

“She is blessed with a voice that reaches people’s hearts. Across the board, everyone can feel her heart when she sings,” he says.