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

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb on an R&B classic

Gladys Knight performs at a special screening of ‘Summer of Soul’ last year (Invision/AP)

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”.