Story of the song: Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight & the Pips

Gladys Knight was beginning to feel like a second-class citizen at Motown, a label she had never wanted to sign with in the first place. During the boom years at Motor City she had been denied the house writing talents of Holland, Dozier and Holland and, despite a run of hits with the Pips, was becoming an untended outpost in Berry Gordy’s empire.

After the appropriately valedictory “Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye)”, it was indeed farewell for Knight. When her Motown contract came up for renewal in 1973, she switched to Buddah Records, run by the record executive Neil Bogart as a catch-all label for late-Sixties pop, rock and soul.

For Knight and the Pips it was a gamble that might not have paid off: their first single, “Where Peaceful Waters Flow”, created few ripples. But the second shunted all aside to top the charts. “Midnight Train to Georgia” came from the prodigious writing talents of Jim Weatherly, who had given Knight “Neither One of Us”. It was originally penned as a slow, Glen Campbell-style country number, “Midnight Plane to Houston”.

Weatherly was inspired by a phone conversation with the actress Farrah Fawcett. “We were just talking and she said she was packing,” said Weatherly. “She was going to take the midnight plane to Houston to visit her folks.” He rang off and, within the hour, the song was finished. Weatherly’s original found its way, appropriately, to Cissy Houston, the mother of Witney, who was signed to Atlantic. The coincidence in names would have sounded too corny, so Atlantic switched Houston for Georgia and grounded the night flight in favour of a rolling soul train.

Houston’s cover of “Midnight Train to Georgia” was a respectable hit in the US and Weatherly’s publisher risked two bites at the cherry, forwarding the song to Knight. Cut in Detroit, the track became a big hit. The song, also the opener on the Pips’ first post-Motown album, Imagination, earned Knight a Grammy for best R&B vocal group performance.