Midnight Train to Georgia (1973)

"Midnight Train to Georgia" is a song most famously performed 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" became the group's first single to top the Billboard Hot 100. It also won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus and has become Knight's signature song. In 2026, the song was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for its "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation's recorded sound heritage."

The song is sung from the perspective of someone whose lover, having failed to become a Hollywood star, is leaving Los Angeles to move back to Georgia, taking the titular "midnight train". The singer expresses her commitment to accompanying him to Georgia: "And I'll be with him (I know you will) / On that midnight train to Georgia".

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 a later interview with Gary James, stated that the phone conversation in question had been with Farrah Fawcett, and he used Fawcett and her friend Lee Majors, whom she had just started dating, "as kind of like characters." Weatherly, at a program in Nashville, said he had been the quarterback at the University of Mississippi, and the NFL didn't work out for him, so he was in Los Angeles 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 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 L.A. 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.

Knight had changed record companies from Motown to Buddah Records, a company with a broader appeal. Weatherly's publisher forwarded the Houston version to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who followed Houston's lead and kept the title "Midnight Train to Georgia" but changed the character of the song. Tony Camillo and Ed Stasium recorded and produced the Al Green-inspired instrumental backing track using a basic band set-up. The vocal recording introduced Knight to ad-libbing towards the end, assisted by her brother. The Pips featured prominently in the call-and-response aspect of the song.

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 two weeks. 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. The record was awarded an RIAA Gold single (for selling one million copies) on October 18, 1973. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number ten on June 5, 1976.

Eddie Middleton had a degree of success with the song. His version made it into the Cash Box Top 100 Country chart and on the fourth week on July 2, 1977, it peaked at no. 84.

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, television 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 #470 on Rolling Stone's updated list of their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Appearance in other media

The song appears in the Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter, playing in a strip club in Saigon visited by Nick (Christopher Walken) in one scene.