Midnight Special

Midnight Special –    A traditional American song, the first trace of Midnight Special in print is in 1905.  The lyric, which is told from a prisoner’s viewpoint, must have appealed to Huddy Ledbetter (better known, of course, as Lead Belly) who popularised the song.  Lead Belly was himself a sometime convict and was, in fact, recorded singing the song whilst in jail during the 1930s.  The Midnight Special of the title is a train.  I would like to believe the rather romantic story that the passing train’s light shone into prison cells near Houston, offering a hope of salvation.  The other theory is that the cons would prefer to be run over by the train rather than spend the rest of their time in prison.  Take your pick!  Midnight Special is a much-recorded song.  There is a skiffle version by Lonnie Donegan, and recordings by Credence Clearwater Revival, Harry Belafonte and Van Morrison, amongst others.  Even the Beatles had a go at it.  Its simple three chord structure makes it an ideal song for beginner guitarists to learn to play. “Midnight Special” is a traditional folk song thought to have originated among prisoners in the American South. The song refers to the passenger train Midnight Special and its “ever-loving light” (sometimes “ever-living light”). The song is historically performed in the country-blues style from the viewpoint of the prisoner and has been performed by many artists. Lyrics appearing in the song were first recorded in print by Howard Odum in 1905.  However, these lyrics are known to be floater lines, appearing in various African-American songs of that period, notably in the “Grade-Songs”, which are about prison captains and have nothing to do with a train or a light.  The first printed reference to the song itself was in a 1923 issue of Adventure magazine, a three-times-a-month pulp magazine published by the Ridgway Company.   In 1927 Carl Sandburg published two different versions of “Midnight Special” in his The American Songbag, the first published versions.  The song was first commercially recorded on the OKeh label in 1926 as “Pistol Pete’s Midnight Special” by Dave “Pistol Pete” Cutrell (a member of McGinty’s Oklahoma Cow Boy Band. March 1929, the band, now Otto Gray and the Oklahoma Cowboys, recorded the song again, this time with the traditional title using only the traditional lyrics.  Sam Collins recorded the song commercially in 1927 under the title “The Midnight Special Blues” for Gennett Records.  His version also follows the traditional style. His is the first to name the woman in the story, Little Nora, and he refers to the Midnight Special’s “ever-living” light:   In 1934 Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter recorded a version of the song at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, who mistakenly attributed it to him as the author. However, Ledbetter, for his Angola session, appears to have inserted several stanzas relating to a 1923 Houston jailbreak into the traditional song. Ledbetter recorded at least three versions of the song, one with the Golden Gate Quartet, a gospel group John and Alan Lomax, in their book, Best Loved American Folk Songs, told a credible story identifying the Midnight Special as a train from Houston shining its light into a cell in the Sugar Land Prison. They also describe Ledbetter’s version as “the Negro jailbird’s ballad to match Hard Times Poor Boy. Like so many American folk songs, its hero is not a man but a train.” The light of the train is seen as the light of salvation, the train which could take them away from the prison walls. It is highly reminiscent of the imagery of such gospel songs as “Let the Light from Your Lighthouse Shine on Me”. Carl Sandburg had a different view. He believed the subject of the song would rather be run over by a train than spend more time in jail. Although later versions place the locale of the song near Houston, early versions such as “Walk Right In Belmont” (Wilmer Watts; Frank Wilson, 1927) and “North Carolina Blues” (Roy Martin, 1930) — both essentially the same song as “Midnight Special” — place it in North Carolina.[13] Most of the early versions, however, have no particular location. Only one recording, collected by the Lomaxes at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, actually identifies the railroad operating the Midnight Special — the Illinois Central which had a route through Mississippi.