Released August 1973 Recorded 1973 Length 3:55 (single version) | Format 7" vinyl single Genre Soul | |
B-side "Midnight Train to Georgia" (instrumental)
"Window Raisin' Granny" (optional) | ||
"Midnight Train to Georgia" is a 1973 number-one hit single by Gladys Knight & the Pips, their second release after departing Motown Records for Buddah Records. Written by Jim Weatherly, and included on the Pips' 1973 LP Imagination, "Midnight Train to Georgia" won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus and has become Knight's signature song.
Contents
Background
The song was originally written and performed by Jim Weatherly under the title "Midnight Plane to Houston", which he recorded on Jimmy Bowen's Amos Records. "It was based on a conversation I had with somebody... about taking a midnight plane to Houston," Weatherly recalls. "I wrote it as a kind of a country song. Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta and he wanted to cut it with Cissy Houston... he asked if I minded if he changed the title to "Midnight Train to Georgia". And I said, 'I don't mind. Just don't change the rest of the song.'" Weatherly, in an interview with Gary James, stated that the phone conversation was with Farrah Fawcett and he used Fawcett and his friend Lee Majors, whom she had just started dating, "as kind of like characters."
Weatherly, at a program in Nashville, said he was the quarterback at the University of Mississippi, the NFL didn't work out for him, so he was in LA trying to write songs. He was in a Rec football league with Lee Majors and called Majors one night. Farrah Fawcett answered the phone and he asked he what she was doing. She said she was "taking the midnight plane to Houston" to visit her family. He thought that was a catchy phrase for a song, and in writing the song, wondered why someone would leave LA on the midnight plane - which brought the idea of a "superstar, but he didn't get far."
Gospel/soul singer Cissy Houston recorded the song as "Midnite Train to Georgia" (spelled "Midnight ..." on the UK single) released in 1973. Her version can also be found on her albums Midnight Train to Georgia: The Janus Years (1995), and the reissue of her 1970 debut album, Presenting Cissy Houston originally released on Janus Records.
Weatherly's publisher forwarded the song to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who followed Houston's lead and kept the title "Midnight Train to Georgia." The single debuted on the Hot 100 at number 71 and became the group's first number-one hit eight weeks later when it jumped from number 5 to number 1 on October 27, 1973, replacing "Angie" by the Rolling Stones. It remained in the top position for another week, thus attaining two weeks at number one. It was replaced by "Keep On Truckin' (Part 1)" by Eddie Kendricks. It also reached number one on the soul singles chart, their fifth on that chart. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number ten.
In her autobiography, Between Each Line of Pain and Glory, Gladys Knight wrote that she hoped the song was a comfort to the many thousands who come each year from elsewhere to Los Angeles to realize the dream of being in motion pictures or music, but then fail to realize that dream and plunge into despair.
In 1999, "Midnight Train to Georgia" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It currently ranks #432 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Appearance in other media
The song was featured during a scene in the 1978 film The Deer Hunter by director Michael Cimino, in which the character Nick (Christopher Walken) - having left the military hospital - is visiting a strip club in Saigon as the girls gyrate to "Midnight Train to Georgia". "Episode 210" of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock features an extensive parody of the song, punctuated by a cameo from Knight herself. The song was also featured in the episode "The Choice" of House, and the episode "Swimming Pools ... Movie Stars" of Will & Grace. Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr reenacted The Pips' dance moves from a live performance of the song for the American Idol finale.
NBC invited Gladys Knight to the season two finale of Las Vegas. She sang "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" and "Midnight Train To Georgia".
In the movie He Was a Quiet Man, Elisha Cuthbert and Christian Slater do a gig of this song at a restaurant when Venessa (Cuthbert) gets released to home care from the hospital. Bob McConnel (Slater) does the Pips.
The song was also mentioned in "The Ice of Boston", a song on The Dismemberment Plan's 1997 album The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified.
In 2013, the song is mentioned and later sung by cast members of the ABC sitcom Modern Family in the episode entitled, The Late Show.
Featured in the 2014 film, The Equalizer, as a nod to a Gladys Knight & the Pips reference made early in the film.
It was also used during an episode of Scandal in 2015.
Personnel
Track details
Initial track recorded at Venture Sound Studios, Hillsborough, New Jersey, 1973:
Overdubs recorded at Venture Sound Studios: