“Midnight Special” is a traditional folk song believed to have originated among prisoners in the American South. Its lyrics were appearing in print by the early 1900s, and the song circulated for years through prison and work-song tradition before it was widely recorded.
The song takes its name and central image from a passenger train, the Midnight Special, whose headlight would sweep across a Southern prison as it passed in the night. To the inmates the light became a token of hope: if its “ever-loving light” shone on a man, the song says, he would soon go free.
“Midnight Special” is most closely associated with Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who recorded a famous version in the 1930s and was long, mistakenly, credited as its author. It has since been sung across blues, folk, country, and bluegrass.
