SOUL superstar Gladys Knight alighted at Liverpool yesterday before boarding her last Midnight Train To Georgia.

The Motown queen showed young pretenders what the business of soul is all about, putting her whole heart into a journey which began back with Every Beat Of My Heart, back in 1961.

The mood Gladys cast over the Arena was mellow and intimate.

It had the feeling of a family party, helped by the arrival of brother (“On my mother and father’s side”) Bubba for a duet of Yesterday and a fascinating montage of snaps of private snaps.

The cavernous half-empty Arena was not ideal, but the tide of love being sent to her made up for it.

She wove her songs together with warm, funny anecdotes. When new boss Mr Gordy wanted her to sing the sultry If I Were Your Woman, she tremulously told him she thought it too forward.

In those days, she explained, nice girls waited for a man to make the move. And she waited, and waited, for her knight on his white horse “until he could have shown up on a truck, on a bus, I don’t care, just show up”.

None of the blistering power of her voice has ebbed away. Licence To Kill thrilled, and the closing Midnight Train To Georgia was sublime.

Special mention to her warm-up act, Tito Jackson. His backing singer – one Nicole Jackson – gave a rendition of I’ll Be There which sounded spookily like Tito’s late brother.

In a memorable night of Motown magic, Gladys went out on a high.