The Pips featured prominently in the call-and-response aspect of the song. The vocal recording introduced Knight to ad-libbing towards the end, assisted by her brother. Tony Camillo and Ed Stasium recorded and produced the Al Green inspired instrumental backing track using a basic band set-up. Weatherly's publisher forwarded the Houston version to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who followed Houston's lead and kept the title "Midnight Train to Georgia" but changed the character of the song. Knight had changed record companies from Motown to Buddah Records, a company with a broader appeal. Her version can also be found on her albums Midnight Train to Georgia: The Janus Years (1995), and the reissue of her 1970 debut album, Presenting Cissy Houston originally released on Janus Records. Gospel/soul singer Cissy Houston recorded the song as "Midnite Train to Georgia" (spelled "Midnight. on the midnight plane – which brought the idea of a "superstar, but he didn't get far". He thought that was a catchy phrase for a song, and in writing the song, wondered why someone would leave L.A. She said she was "taking the midnight plane to Houston" to visit her family. Farrah Fawcett answered the phone and he asked what she was doing. He was in a rec football league with Lee Majors and called Majors one night. Weatherly, in a later interview with Gary James, stated that the phone conversation in question had been with Farrah Fawcett, and he used Fawcett and her friend Lee Majors, whom she had just started dating, "as kind of like characters." Weatherly, at a program in Nashville, said he had been the quarterback at the University of Mississippi, and the NFL didn't work out for him, so he was in Los Angeles trying to write songs. Just don't change the rest of the song.'" he asked if I minded if he changed the title to "Midnight Train to Georgia". Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta and he wanted to cut it with Cissy Houston. about taking a midnight plane to Houston," Weatherly recalls. "It was based on a conversation I had with somebody. The song was originally written and performed by Jim Weatherly under the title "Midnight Plane to Houston," which he recorded on Jimmy Bowen's Amos Records. The singer expresses her commitment to joining him in Georgia: "I'll be with him. The song is sung from the perspective of someone whose lover, having failed to become a Hollywood star, is leaving Los Angeles to move back to Georgia, taking the titular "midnight train". It also won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus and has become Knight's signature song. Written by Jim Weatherly, and included on the Pips' 1973 LP Imagination, "Midnight Train to Georgia" became the group's first single to top the Billboard Hot 100. " Midnight Train to Georgia" is a song most famously performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips, their second release after departing Motown Records for Buddah Records. Gladys Knight & the Pips singles chronology "Midnight Train to Georgia" (instrumental).Have fun practicing and see you in the next tutorial!ĭo you have a question about this lesson? Did you enjoy today’s lesson? Please leave a comment below and let us know. If you need help learning tunes or want to learn how to apply block chords quickly, there are lots of arrangements inside The Premium Membership Course that show you how in a step by step method. To help you practice this technique further, I recommend you flip through a fake book and find some tunes where there aren’t a ton of jumps in the melody.įor example, you can apply it to tunes like Bye Bye Blackbird, the B section of Green Dolphin Street, The Nearness Of You, There Will Never Be Another You, and many more. You can apply block chords to any tune but often times the technique works best when there is a lot of stepwise motion in the melody. This is because the hands are close together and there isn’t as much room to play with fingers 4 and 5 in the left hand without getting in the way of the right hand. From a technical perspective, also notice how Pete only uses 3 fingers in the left hand (fingers 1, 2, and 3) to play these chords. Pay special attention to how Pete uses diminished chords in this lesson.īecause diminished chords need to be resolved, they work perfectly as transition chords leading into the next voicing.ħ. It makes each melody note sound very full and very rich.Ħ. One of the cool parts of this block chord style is that every melody note is harmonized with a new chord voicing. In between we fill in the harmony of the chord with additional chord tones.ĥ. The right plays the higher melody note and the left hand plays the same melody note an octave lower.Ĥ. These can all be found inside The Premium Membership Course.ģ. In the locked hand style we double the melody note in octaves. We also feature lots of additional block chord techniques inside:
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