Midnight Plane to Houston

"Midnight Train to Georgia" is a 1973 number-one hit single by Gladys Knight & the Pips and written by Jim Weatherly. The song was originally recorded by singer Cissy Houston, and released as a single a year earlier.

Jim Weatherly had recorded one of his own songs, "Midnight Plane to Houston," based on a phone conversation he had 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 on 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 later related that the phone conversation was with Farrah Fawcett and he used Fawcett and his friend Lee Majors, who she'd just started dating, "as kind of like characters."

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." In her autobiography 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 August 1973, Amtrak actually offered direct service from Los Angeles to Atlanta, but it left Los Angeles at 9 p.m.