According to folk music historian Alan Lomax as documented in the book Folk Song USA, the Midnight Special was a real train: the Southern Pacific Golden Gate Limited. A traditional folk song, popularized it upon his release from Sugar Land prison in Texas, where he could hear the Midnight Special come through. In the song, the light of the train gives the inmates hope - if it shines on them they take it as a sign they will soon go free. They describe Lead Belly's version as "the Negro jailbird's ballad to match Hard Times Poor Boy". Like so many American folk songs, its hero is not a man but a train." The light of the train is seen as the light of salvation, the train which could take them away from the prison walls
Lyrics appearing in the song were first recorded in print by Howard Odum in 1905:
Get up in the mornin' when ding dong rings,
Look at table — see the same damn thing
The song was on the OKeh label in 1926 as "Pistol Pete's Midnight Special" by Dave "Pistol Pete" Cutrell (a member of McGinty's Oklahoma Cow Boy Band). Sam Collins commercially in 1927 under the title "The Midnight Special Blues" for Gennett Records. His version also follows the traditional style. His is the first to name the woman in the story, Little Nora, and he refers to the Midnight Special's "ever-living" light:
Yonder come a Little Nora. How in the world do you know?
I know by the apron and the dress she wears
Although later versions place the locale of the song near Houston, early versions such as "" (Wilmer Watts; Frank Wilson, 1927) and "North Carolina Blues" (Roy Martin, 1930) — both essentially the same song as "Midnight Special" — place it in North Carolina. Most of the early versions, however, have no particular location. Only one recording, collected by the Lomaxes at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, actually identifies the railroad operating the Midnight Special — the Illinois Central which had a route through Mississippi.
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