October 9, 1973: Gladys Knight & The Pips -- Gladys, and 3 of her cousins: Merald "Bubba" Knight (also the group's manager), Edward Patten and William Guest -- release their album Imagination. They recorded it at Venture Sound in Somerville, New Jersey. It was their 1st album on Buddah Records, after leaving Motown Records, where, in 1967, they'd hit Number 2 with "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," a year before Marvin Gaye hit Number 1 with it.
The "title track," "I've Got to Use My Imagination," was written by Gerry Goffin, ex-husband and ex-songwriting partner of Carole King, and Barry Goldberg. It also included covers of Johnny Nash's 1972 Number 1 hit "I Can See Clearly Now," with Bubba singing lead; and of "Perfect Love" by Paul Williams -- the diminutive white singer-songwriter, not the former Temptations singer who had recently taken his own life. And the group members shared in the credit for writing "Window Raisin' Granny."
The other songs were written by Jim Weatherly, who had been a quarterback at the University of Mississippi, backing up future New York Yankees catcher Jake Gibbs on their 1962 National Championship team. He wrote "Storms of Troubled Times," "Once in a Lifetime Thing," "Where Peaceful Waters Flow," and the Top 10 hit "The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me."
But it was the 1st song on the album that became the signature song for Gladys Knight, and for Jim Weatherly. The idea for the song was that he hadn't made it in the NFL, so he had to start over. He did so in the music business, and was doing all right.
He kept playing football in a city recreation league, and one of his teammates was actor Lee Majors, who had begun starring in The Six Million Dollar Man, and had recently married actress Farrah Fawcett. One night, Jim called Lee, and Farrah answered. Jim asked her what she was doing, and she said she was heading for her hometown: "Taking the midnight plane to Houston." He thought that was a great title for a song, and wrote it. He recalled:
I wrote it as a kind of a country song. Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta, and he wanted to cut it with Cissy Houston... He asked if I minded if he changed the title to "Midnight Train to Georgia." And I said, "I don't mind. Just don't change the rest of the song."
Cissy recorded it, and her version was sent to Gladys, since she and the Pips were also from Atlanta. The call-and-response with the Pips made it a better version, but what really makes it is Gladys giving the effect that she feels her man's shattered dream as much as he does, to the point where she realizes that even going home won't help him much without her by his side: "I've got to go! I've got to go... "
On October 27, 1973, Billboard magazine had the song ranked at Number 1 on their Hot 100, Gladys' only chart-topper, except for her being 1 of the 4 lead singers on Dionne Warwick's 1986 AIDS fundraiser "That's What Friends Are For."
The song has been used in several movies and TV shows. In the 2013 Modern Family episode "The Late Show," the grownups struggled to meet a restaurant reservation, and the teenagers sang "Midnight Train to Georgia" together while babysitting infant Joe. At the end of the show, Jay (Ed O'Neill) leads the grownups in a rendition of it, calling it his favorite song -- but also saying that the midnight train to Georgia was "a train I'd never make unless I told Gloria it left at 11."
Edward Patten died in 2005, which brought an end to the Pips as a touring group. William Guest died
in 2015. Jim Weatherly died in 2021. As of October 9, 2022, Gladys and Bubba Knight are still alive, and Bubba still manages Gladys.
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October 9, 1973 was a Tuesday. Game 4 was played in the National League Championship Series, at Shea Stadium in New York. Pete Rose rebounded from the previous day's fight with Bud Harrelson, and the hatred of the New York Mets' fans -- a banner in left field read, "A Rose by any other name still stinks" -- and hit a home run in the top of the 12th inning, to give the Cincinnati Reds a 2-1 win, sending the NLCS will go to a 5th and deciding game.
Game 3 was played in the American League Championship Series, and it, too, featured an extra-inning home run. Bert Campaneris hit a walkoff homer in the 11th inning, and the Oakland Athletics defeated the Baltimore Orioles, 2-1, which was also now the A's' lead in the ALCS.
Football was in midweek. The NBA season began, and the Capital Bullets debuted, having been the Baltimore Bullets for the preceding 10 years. They didn't quite move into the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., instead opening the new saddle-roofed Capital Centre in the suburb of Landover, Maryland, just 33 miles from the Baltimore Civic Center.
To put that in perspective: The San Francisco 49ers' Levi's Stadium is 46 miles from downtown San Francisco, and only 9 miles from downtown San Jose, but they have kept the "San Francisco" name.
The Bullets played their 1st game on the road, against the Atlanta Hawks at the Omni, and lost, 128-114. Mike Riordan led the Bullets with 26 points, but Super Lou Hudson scored for 41 for the hosts.
The Bullets changed their name to the Washington Bullets the next season, and in 1997 to the Washington Wizards, to help offset the District of Columbia's image as "the murder capital of America." That same year, they will leave the suburbs for the District, opening the arena now known as the Verizon Center. The Cap Centre was demolished in 2002, and was replaced with a mall.
Amazingly, the Baltimore Civic Center still stands, under the name of the CFG Bank Arena. The city is finally working on a plan to replace it with a more modern arena, in the hopes of attracting an NBA or NHL team.
There were 3 other games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 101-100 at Madison Square Garden.
* The Buffalo Braves beat the Houston Rockets, 107-105 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Chicago Bulls, 117-97 at the Chicago Stadium.
No games were played in the NHL, or in the American Basketball Association, but there were 2 in the World Hockey Association. The New York Golden Blades and the Toronto Toros played to a tie, 3-3 at the Varsity Arena in Toronto. And the New England Whalers beat the Quebec Nordiques, 3-2 at the Boston Garden.
On the same day, ill-fated Mets pitcher Bill Pulsipher and Super Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams safety Dexter McCleon were born. And gospel-singing, guitar-slinging legend Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the founding mothers of rock and roll, died of a diabetes-aided stroke, at the age of 58.
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