“Midnight Train to Georgia” (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

Today’s classic song of the day is that soul classic, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” by Gladys Knight & the Pips. Everybody knows this one and for good reason; it’s a helluva song and a helluva performance. Released in August of 1973, it climbed all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard R&B, and Cash Box Top 100 charts. It also sold more than a million copies and won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo, Group, or Chorus. Yeah, everybody knows this one.

“Midnight Train to Georgia” didn’t start out with a train or going to Georgia. The song’s composer, Jim Weatherly, was pals with famous actor Lee Majors (of The Big Valley and Six Million Dollar Man fame). Weatherly called his pal one evening and Lee’s girlfriend, equally famous blonde actress (and soon to be Mrs. Majors) Farrah Fawcett, answered the phone. Weatherly asked Farrah what she was doing, and she told him she was packing for a trip to visit family back home in Texas. She told him she was taking a midnight plane to Houston, and Weatherly recognized a great song title when he heard it.

That song, originally titled “Midnight Plane to Houston,” was about a young man who’d come to L.A. to find fame and fortune but failed, and was going back home to Houston to find the world he’d left behind. It was about “a superstar, but he didn’t get far,” who wanted to get back to his roots.

The first performer to record the song was R&B legend Cissy Houston, aunt of Dionne Warwick and mother of Whitney Houston. She didn’t like the idea of a Houston singing about going to Houston, and also thought that a down-and-out performer would more likely be taking a train than an expensive plane. She altered the lyrics to reflect that and recorded the song as “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Houston’s version didn’t go far, but it did catch the attention of Gladys Knight who, along with her Pips, had just left Motown Records for a new contract with Buddah Records. Gladys picked up the tempo, added a bit of backing glitz, and brought the Pips on board with their catchy call-and-responsr backing vocals. (Which, admittedly, were hinted at in Ms. Houston’s version.) That was the magic touch.

“Midnight Train to Georgia” was the first number-one hit for Gladys Knight & the Pips (Gladys’ brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins William Guest and Edward Patten). Gladys had first performed on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour in 1952, at age eight. That same year, Gladys and several of her relatives started performing for parties and such, eventually signing with Brunswick Records in 1957. They released a couple of non-charting singles with Brunswick, got dropped by the label, then got picked up by Fury Records in 1961. They had a couple of minor hits with Fury (“Every Beat of My Heart” and “Letter Full of Tears”), but Gladys left the group a year later to start a family. When Gladys returned a few years later, the group signed with Maxx Records and had another Top 40 hit with Van McCoy’s “Giving Up.”

That led to the group signing with Motown Records’ Soul Records label in 1966. They had several hits with Motown, their biggest being the original version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. (That song also got covered, more famously, by fellow Motown artist Marvin Gaye, who took it all the way to number one.) They also had Motown hits with “If I Were Your Woman” (#9 in 1970) and “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” (#2 in 1972).

Fearing that they were being lost in the multitude of equally successful Motown acts and afraid of being pigeonholed as R&B artists, Gladys and the Pips left Motown in 1973 and signed with Buddah Records, a label with more general appeal. Their first hit with Buddah was “Midnight Train to Georgia,” followed by “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” (#4 in 1973), “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” (#3 in 1974), “On and On” (#5 in 1974), and a medley of “The Way We Were/Try to Remember” (#11 in 1975). Gladys also had a successful solo career that included singing the theme song for the 1989 James Bond movie, License to Kill.

Gladys Knight & the Pips were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001, the Apollo Theater’s Hall of Fame in 2006, and the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2017. They also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. Fortunately for all of us, Gladys is still singing today, aged 79. We’ll always live in her world.