Writer of Let The Midnight Special Shine On me?!


Question: Huddie Leadbetter also known as Leadbelly recorded it but I don't know who actually wrote it. I have 7 cd's of his music. I really like it. I see more google answers


Answers: Huddie Leadbetter also known as Leadbelly recorded it but I don't know who actually wrote it. I have 7 cd's of his music. I really like it. I see more google answers

No-one knows. It's much older than CCR and even older than Leadbelly.

It's a bit like the old song "Cocaine Blues" which had been hanging around in New Orleans and elsewhere long before anyone recorded it.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Was it Credence Clearwater?

a version by Huddie Ledbetter, collected and adapted by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax. in 1936..... the song ORIGINALLY was written by an unknown writer.... the most popular version (words were changed around a bit each time someone wrote a version-) was by John Fogerty of the band Creedence Clearwater Revival....which again had different lyrics ....

Can't tell you the songwriter.

Know a version of it was sung by Johnny Rivers.

It is generally attributed to Leadbelly, who supposedly wrote it while in prison in 1934 and recorded it a year or two later. It is that version which was later recorded by CCR and other singers many years later. However, it goes back much further than that. I have a version by Bill Cox called the "The Midnight Special," recorded in 1931--the words are a lot different, with some lines that sound like they are from a Jimmie Rodgers song. But the chorus has the line "let the Midnight Special shine its light on me." I think the song was actually around a lot longer than that. Leadbelly probably changed the words, keeping the title and part of the chorus the same.

Actually, it is fairly certain that Leadbelly did write the Midnight Special while incarcerated in a Texas prison (can't remember the name). A train running through Texas to California left at midnight on the dot. The legend was that if the light shone on a prisoner's face, he would soon be freed. Like many folk, blues, and early country songs, The Midnight Special uses themes and lines that are common to other songs, but not in the form used by Leadbelly. The Bill Cox song is a completely different song, based, itself, on an earlier song.



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