“Midnight Special” (Roud 6364) 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.” 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:
Get up in the mornin’ when ding dong rings,
Look at table—see the same damn thing
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. Cutrell follows the traditional song except for semi-comedic stanzas about Billy McGinty and Otto Gray, who took over as bandleader and manager when McGinty left the band, and “a cowboy band”: In 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.[9] 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:
Yonder come a Little Nora. How in the world do you know?
I know by the apron and the dress she wears.
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 (recorded for RCA at Victor Studio #2, New York City, June 15, 1940).
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 jailbirds 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. 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.
