1975 Gladys Knight and the Pips – The Way We Were/Try To Remember
After Gladys Knight and the Pips left Motown Records and moved to Buddah Records, they missed the top twenty with their first single stalled at #28. Their next single, Midnight Train To Georgia, went all the way to the top of the Hot 100 and the R&B chart.
Three more top ten singles followed, but after that, the group never again reached the top ten on the Hot 100. They scored nearly a dozen more top ten records in the R&B chart (including a few more #1 singles), but the closest they came on the Hot 100 was a single that stopped at #11.
That record was a medley of The Way We Were and Try To Remember.
Barbra Streisand had recorded The Way We Were as the title song for her 1973 film, and the single reached the top of the Hot 100 and became the most successful single of that year.
Try To Remember came from the 1960 off-Broadway play, The Fantasticks. Jerry Orbach, who later played Lennie Briscoe on the television show Law And Order, performed the song in the play during its original run.
In 1965, three versions of Try To Remember reached the Hot 100 with versions by Ed Ames (#73 on the Hot 100 and #17 on the Adult Contemporary chart), the Brothers Four (#91 and #10), and Roger Williams (#97 only on the Hot 100).
The single from Gladys Knight and the Pips was a recording from a live performance that reached #11 on the Hot 100. The single also reached #4 in the UK, the highest any of their records reached there.
The Wu-Tan Clan sampled portions of The Way We Were in 1993 for their single Can It Be All So Simple, which reached #24 on the US Rap chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Knight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pips_discography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_We_Were_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Try_to_Remember
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