Songwriter Jim Weatherly
When you’re a songwriter, in some ways, you have to have a way with words, mainly when you write a hit song. The dictionary defines the phrase wordsmith as “an expert with words.” Jim Weatherly fits that description when writing “Midnight Train To Georgia.” Weatherly has written a host of songs for artists, including Gladys Knight and The Pips. Songs like “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye),” “Where Peaceful Waters Flow,” “Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me,” and “Midnight Train To Georgia.”
What’s the story behind “Midnight Train To Georgia”?
Weatherly said when he was in college, he played Flag football with a group of guys, and one of them was his good friend Lee Majors, who later became a famous actor in the tv series The Big Valley and The Six Million Dollar Man.
One evening he calls Majors, he was dating Farah Fawcett at the time. Weatherly had known Farah thru Majors. She answered the phone, and during the conversation, she says she was packing her clothes and taking a midnight plane to Houston to visit family. Weatherly says a bell went off in his head, thinking midnight plane to Houston sounded like a good song title. After he hung up, he wrote “Midnight Plane To Houston” in about 45 minutes. He says Majors and Fawcett were his inspiration.
Weatherly recorded and put it on his first album.
He thought it would be a good Pop Country song like Glen Campbell.
He never imagined it being R&B. About a year later, Weatherly’s publisher called and said Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother, wanted to record it but asked if they could change the title to “Midnight Train To Georgia” to reflect more an R&B flavor. Houston wouldn’t appear in the title and artist’s name.
Weatherly agreed but had no idea it would stay “Midnight Train To Georgia” because they pitched “Midnight Train To Houston.” It wasn’t until Gladys Knight heard it and wanted to record it but keep the title “Midnight Train To Georgia.” Weatherly says Cissy Houston did a great job, but Gladys’s version was more fitting since she didn’t take planes; she took trains and being from Georgia.
Recording of Midnight Train To Georgia
Gladys Knight says the night of recording “Midnight Train To Georgia, everybody showed up. Their manager, record company president, and many others. She doesn’t know why. Gladys says Bubba, a member of the pips and her brother, produces her when she is singing because she is a horrible ad libber. The night of the recording, Bubba is behind the control board, and he tells Gladys to ad-lib, “I’ve Got To Go, I’ve Got To Go.” She says when they get through with the song, the studio’s people all stood up and applauded. They knew they had a hit.
“Midnight Train To Georgia” climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 single charts In 1973. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1999, and in 2003 Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the top 500 songs of all time.
Jim Weatherly died on February 3, 2021, at the age of 77.
Gladys Knight said of his passing in an interview with the Tennessean: “We were just made for each other. I loved most of his lyrics — not just his melodies — you could live through his lyrics. We grew our lives together. I’m going to miss him terribly and love him always.”
