Singer-songwriter Jim Weatherly is the architect behind a handful of pop classics, songs that are more than likely permanently loaded on the running playlist in your head. One of his most enduring creations has a special connection to the late Texas native Farrah Fawcett.

Weatherly wrote such hits as "Neither One Of Us", "Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me" and "Midnight Train To Georgia", which would go on to be recorded by the like of Gladys Knight & The Pips, Ray Price, and Neil Diamond.

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His list of songwriting credits on his official site is massive, featuring names that are familiar with country fans of most any age. Not many people can say that Lee Majors, Vince Gill, and Widespread Panic recorded takes on their songs. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014, a high honor for anyone in the industry.

The most enduring Weatherly hit though has to be "Midnight Train To Georgia."

But as fans of Weatherly (formerly a star college quarterback for the Ole Miss Rebels) no doubt know, that's not even the original title of the song. It once had ties closer to Houston in any earlier incarnation.

Weatherly wrote and recorded "Midnight Plane To Houston" in 1971 after speaking to Farrah Fawcett, his old college football buddy Lee Majors' current girlfriend. Majors and Fawcett later wed in 1973 and separated in 1979

In August 2013, Weatherly told the Wall Street Journal that he called Majors to chat but that the actor wasn't home, so he instead made small talk with the bubbly Fawcett.

The model and actress was packing a bag to fly to Houston to visit her family, who still made their home here at the time. And so "Midnight Plane to Houston" was born.



The Tennessean talked to Weatherly in 2013 and had him retrace the lineage of the song for their cameras.



"A little bell went off when she said 'midnight plane to Houston' and it sounded like a song to me," he told the paper.

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He saw it as a pop-country composition, and not an R&B standard. He thought it to be perfect for Glen Campbell or someone along those lines.You can hear Weatherly's "Houston" version here.

Obviously Los Angeles didn't prove "too much" for Fawcett as the song goes, but Fawcett's situation did lend itself to a bit of character development. In just a few short years Fawcett would become a pin-up model for boys across the world and one of Charlie's crime-fighting angels.

Weatherly's "I'd rather live in her world than live without her in mine," line in the song is worthy of the Songwriters Hall Of Fame no doubt.



Later Cissy Houston -- mother of Whitney -- would record it, switching Georgia for Houston. It could have been confusing for listeners, hearing a song from an artist named Houston singing about escaping to Houston.



"My people are originally from Georgia and they didn't take planes to Houston or anywhere else. They took trains," Houston told the WSJ in 2013.



"It did have more of an R&B flavor with that title," Weatherly told the Tennessean.

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Gladys Knight & The Pips picked up the song in 1973 and made it their own, nabbing a Grammy and becoming one of Knight's most-enduring hits.

Knight changed some of the lyrics for her version, running the variations by Weatherly.

"He allowed us that freedom," Knight told the WSJ.

Now you can hear the song on "American Idol," your favorite oldies station, or at a karaoke night being butchered by drunks.



Oddly enough, the man who recorded and mixed the Pips' version of the song, Ed Stasium, also engineered and produced a handful of albums by the Ramones and Talking Heads. You gotta crawl before you can pogo.