It all started with football.

In 1965, Jim Weatherly, a former standout college quarterback for the University Of Mississippi who didn’t get the call from the NFL, moved to Los Angeles after graduation with dreams of musical stardom. He almost immediately scored a recording contract, released a couple of albums that gained attention locally, and continued to write songs non-stop. 

But once you’ve tasted pigskin and gridiron, it stays with you, like a hard tackle to your heart. 

Weatherly joined a recreational flag football team in the early 70’s and struck up a friendship with an actor who had once been offered a tryout with the St. Louis Cardinals (the footballers, not the baseballers) but turned them down to move to Hollywood, a town where he had recently started to make a small name for himself on television. Southern boys with a love of football and fame, the pair had a lot in common.

One fateful day, Weatherly phoned his friend, but the actor’s girlfriend picked up instead. His friend was out so the two chatted for a few minutes. She mentioned she was packing her bags and heading home to visit family, leaving on a midnight plane to Houston. Weatherly felt a tingle. He wrote country songs and that sure sounded like a country song title to him.

Within an hour of hanging up he’d finished “Midnight Train To Houston,” concocting an imaginary story about a would-be actress who fails in L.A. and returns home, but the singer loves her too much to let her go back alone. Weatherly recorded it for his own album, which didn’t bring it to the attention of the public, but did gain the attention of the producer for soul singer Cissy “Mother of Whitney” Houston, who said the song was too country but they liked it and wanted to give it a little southern R&B feel. Could they possibly change the title to “Midnight Train To Georgia”? If Cissy was going to sing it, they were told, they could do whatever they wanted. Houston recorded the track but then decided not to release it.

Enter Gladys Knight & The Pips. Finally.

By 1973, Knight and The Pips (a trio comprised of one of her brothers and two of their cousins) had already recorded a number of Weatherly’s songs, including a sizable hit the year before. They heard Houston’s rendition and decided to adopt a couple of her changes to the original, including the new title and the backing vocals, but decided to strip away the last remnants of country for a full-on modern soul song.

Session musicians recorded three different arrangements before everyone finally felt the magic was in place, and then Gladys Knight came into the studio and nailed her vocal in one take. Like a boss. The Pips hopped aboard with some smooth backing vocals and the train was ready to leave the station.

Released in late summer of 1973, “Midnight Train To Georgia” choo-chooed its way to #1 by Halloween, and later won a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Group.

But what about Weatherly’s football friend, the actor? Oh, he had a pretty good 1973, too, when he was cast as the lead in The Six Million Dollar Man, a hit TV show which made Lee Majors a major star. And his plane-taking girlfriend from Texas? Did things work out for her? Well, it took a few more years, but Farrah Fawcett eventually became a defining sex symbol of the 70’s and an acclaimed actress in the 80’s.

It took a long time to get to the twist, but we got there in the end.

So go back to a simpler place and time … with Gladys Knight & The Pips.