1973 No. 1, Originally Inspired By Farrah Fawcett, Topped The Charts 53 Years Ago Today [Pub Nov 2]

On October 29, 1973, "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips had just moved up to the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 pop chart, where it would stay for two weeks. Emotionally stirring and soulful, it's a cover song better than the original version that highlights Knight's voice, one of the most beautiful in soft rock history. Originally composed years earlier, the songwriter was prompted to create the epic, bittersweet homecoming song with an impromptu conversation with actor Farrah Fawcett, well before "Charlie's Angels" made her a superstar.

One day in 1970, songwriter Jim Weatherly placed a phone call to the home of his flag football friend, Lee Majors, at the time a well-known TV star who'd just ended a four-year stint on "The Big Valley." Majors wasn't home, and so Weatherly gabbed instead with the actor's partner, bit player Farrah Fawcett. Weatherly asked what Fawcett was up to, and she said that she was packing a bag for a trip to see relatives in Texas so she could catch that evening's "midnight plane to Houston." That phrase clicked with Weatherly so much that he wrote a song around that hook in no more than 45 minutes.

"Midnight Train to Georgia," through its various permutations, isn't really about Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors. "I actually used Farrah and Lee as characters," he admitted in "Cover Me: The Stores Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time." They're the figures that fueled the premise of a woman who came to Hollywood to be a movie star and returned to her hometown, unhappily defeated, to be with her boyfriend.

Because of the Texas city in the title he got from talking to Fawcett, Weatherly figured "Midnight Plane to Houston" should be a country song. Unable to get Glen Campbell interested, he recorded it himself for his 1972 album "Weatherly." It didn't make an impact, and Weatherly had his publisher ship it to Gladys Knight. She passed, but R&B star Cissy Houston said yes, with a caveat — she made Weatherly change the mode of transport to a train and the destination to Georgia to make it more personally relatable. 

"Midnight Train to Georgia" was reborn in 1972, and with a male protagonist, too. Houston's version was a minor hit on the R&B chart when Gladys Knight and the Pips, responsible for some of the best Motown hits that still get boomers dancing, landed with Buddah Records and were looking to record something moodier and different from her usual fare. This time she was willing to record the revamped "Midnight Train to Georgia" and made it one of her group's signature hits.