Cissy Houston Archives - chimesfreedom

One of the many highlights of the great 1969 Elvis Presley album From Elvis in Memphis is “Any Day Now.” While that album yielded other hits, Presley’s “Any Day Now” was not even released as a single. But seven years earlier, someone else had scored a hit recording of the song. Singer Chuck Jackson had a top 25 hit with the song, sometimes listed as “Any Day Now (My Beautiful Bird).” The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard.

Jackson was born July 22, 1937 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After starting off with a gospel group, he joined the 1957 to sing with a gospel group. Later that year, he joined the Del-Vikings (also known as the Dell-Vikings) in 1957 before leaving the group in 1959 to start a solo career.

Jackson’s biggest pop hit would be 1962’s “Any Day Now.” But he had other successes on the R&B charts like “Something You Got” and “Beg Me.” The latter song featured backing vocals by Whitney Houston’s mother Cissy Houston, who also later often sang back up for Elvis. Jackson passed away on February 16, 2023.

“Any Day Now” is a somewhat unique pop song as it is not directly a love song and not about a break up. Instead it is about an in-between time, where the singer laments that his lover will soon leave him “any day now.”

Any day now,
When the clock strikes go,
You’ll call it off;
Then my tears will flow;
Then the blue shadow will fall all over town;
Any day now,
Love will let me down;
Oh, oh, oh.

In the video below, a young Burt Bacharach, who passed away eight days after Jackson died, introduces Jackson to sing the song that Bacharach co-wrote. Check it out.

As noted above, Elvis Presley’s version appeared on what was a “comeback” album for him in 1969, recorded at American Sound Studio. That album featured many outstanding tracks like “Suspicious Minds,” which partly explains why he never released “Any Day Now” as a single. But the song did appear as the B-side to “In the Ghetto.”

Elvis’s version is very similar to Jackson’s, down to the introduction. Unfortunately, Elvis never performed “Any Day Now” in concert, although he came close. On August 12, 1972, he rehearsed the song in the Main Showroom of the Las Vegas Hilton before starting a run of shows there. But unfortunately, the song did not make it into the setlist. The song did, however, make it into the recent Elvis (2022) movie and soundtrack.

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How Farah Fawcett Inspired “Midnight Train to Georgia”

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

One evening in 1970, songwriter Jim Weatherly called up a friend from his college years, the actor Lee Majors. Weatherly and Majors played in a flag-football league together. But the actor was not home, and his girlfriend Farah Fawcett answered the phone, saying something that would inspire Weatherly to write the song “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

After reporting that Majors was not home, Fawcett said she was packing for a trip. More specifically, she said she was preparing to take a midnight plane to Houston to visit her parents. Weatherly, who had a songwriter’s ear, immediately recognized a great phrase for a song.

Weatherly’s “Midnight Plane to Houston”

As Weatherly explained in the book Anatomy of a Song: The Inside Stories Behind 45 Iconic Hits, by Marc Myers, Weatherly created the song “Midnight Plane to Houston” in about 45 minutes. Weatherly recorded the song on an album of songs, hoping a famous singer would record one or more of the songs.

Below is Weatherly’s own recording of “Midnight Plane.”

Cissy Houston’s Changes

Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney Houston, was the first to want to record “Midnight Plane.” But because she was from Georgia, and because people she knew took trains instead of planes, she asked to change to title. Weatherly agreed, and the title about a train going to Georgia was born.

Houston recorded the song as “Midnite Train to Georgia” in Memphis in 1972 (released with spelling “Midnight” in the UK). But without much support from the label, the song went nowhere. Houston’s version has more strings than the later hit recording, but it is still a very good recording.

Gladys Knight & the Pips Create a Classic

But then, Weatherly’s manager-publisher sent the song to Gladys Knight, who also was from Georgia. She loved the song.

Although she loved Houston’s version, she wanted a different sound. She also made some tweaks to Weatherly’s lyrics with his permission. Her producer added several horn players, including saxophone player Michael Brecker, while putting less emphasis on the rhythm section.

When Gladys Knight & the Pips recorded their vocal tracks in Detroit, she thought of problems in her own marriage. Her husband at the time was unhappy because she was on the road so much. They would eventually divorce in 1973. But, as Knight explained in Anatomy of a Song, “I was going through the exact same thing that I was singing about when recording — which is probably why it sounds so personal.”

During the recording session, the leader of the Pips, Merald “Bubba” Knight asked her to ad-lib some gospel phrases at the end of the song. Gladys had trouble coming up with good lines, so Bubba, who also was her brother, fed her lines through her headset. The improvised lines included “My world, his world, our world” and “I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go.”

The song was finally completed.

After “Midnight Train to Georgia” was released in August 1973, it became the group’s first number-one hit song on October 27, 1973. It also won the 1974 Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus.

And that is the story behind the song.

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