{"id":744,"date":"2016-03-26T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=744"},"modified":"2024-01-16T15:34:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T20:34:09","slug":"midnight-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/midnight-special\/","title":{"rendered":"Midnight Special"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Midnight Special\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EgdjT69eP-Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Once again, I learned this from the Cisco Houston songbook, and still sing it almost exactly as printed there, and like a lot of songs in that book it still comes into my head w<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-745 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/midnight-special.jpg?resize=220%2C263&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"midnight special\" width=\"220\" height=\"263\" \/>ith the accompanying illustration, of a man who is presumably a prison guard, standing with his rifle.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, like everyone else, I soon heard one of Lead Belly&#8217;s versions, which was undoubtedly Cisco&#8217;s source as well, since he includes many of Lead Belly&#8217;s points of reference: Sugarland penitentiary, where Lead Belly was imprisoned from 1918 to 1925, and the sheriff of Houston, Texas, whose name Cisco&#8217;s book gave as Benson Brocker (which is what I sing), but Lead Belly&#8217;s biographers give as Bason and Brock, explaining that A.W. Brock was the chief of police, but not giving any info on Bason.<\/p>\n<p>The song was apparently known throughout the South, and was recorded several times in the 1920s, first <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-746 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Crying-Sam-Collins.jpg?resize=220%2C270&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Crying Sam Collins\" width=\"220\" height=\"270\" \/>by a white Oklahoman named Dave &#8220;Pistol Pete&#8221; Cutrell in 1926, then a year later by Crying Sam Collins, a black guitarist and singer from Louisiana and Mississippi, who has some wonderful variations on the standard melody. Bruce Jackson and other scholars have listed this as a popular prison song, circulated in oral tradition, but I&#8217;m struck by how similar the early recordings are, and have to wonder whether it also circulated in some more formal way, as a song sheet or performed by a popular black (or white?) vaudeville entertainer &#8212; though I have no basis whatsoever for that guess, aside from the fact that some relatively generic-sounding verses seem to have been firmly attached to this song all across the South.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, pretty much everyone who now sings it uses variants of Lead Belly&#8217;s verses, with their Texas references and the mention of &#8220;Jumpin&#8217; Judy,&#8221; which Steve Calt glosses as a slang term for a woman who would have sex with lots of men &#8212; a reasonable guess, since the word &#8220;Judy&#8221; was already noted in 1810 as slang for prostitute or, to be precise, for a &#8220;blowen<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-756 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/midnight-special-78-album.jpg?resize=300%2C261&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"261\" \/>,&#8221; a wonderfully archaic Briticism.<\/p>\n<p>Some sources add that there was a legend in Sugarland (or in other prisons) that if the light of the midnight train shone on a prisoner through his window, he would soon be released. I am not aware of any solid evidence for this, and as far as I know it may have been invented by an imaginative folklorist&#8230; but if anyone out there knows more, please fill me in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another I&#8217;ve known forever, with Cisco Houston my principle source, though I&#8217;ve heard dozens of other versions since&#8230;including, of course, Lead Belly&#8217;s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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