In the Midnight Hour
| "In the Midnight Hour" | |
|---|---|
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| Single by Wilson Pickett | |
| from the album In the Midnight Hour | |
| B-side | I'm Not Tired |
| Released | 1965 |
| Genre | Rhythm and Blues, Soul |
| Label | Atlantic |
| Writer(s) | |
| "In the Midnight Hour" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by the Mirettes | ||||
| from the album In the Midnight Hour | ||||
| B-side | To Love Somebody | |||
| Released | November 1967 | |||
| Format | 7" single | |||
| Genre | R&B | |||
| Length | 3:23 | |||
| Label | Revue | |||
| Writer(s) | Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper | |||
| Producer(s) | Jerry Goldstein | |||
| the Mirettes singles chronology | ||||
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| "In the Midnight Hour" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Cross Country | ||||
| from the album Cross Country | ||||
| B-side | A Smile Song | |||
| Released | July 1973 | |||
| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | 14 February 1973, Century Sound Studios(NYC) |
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| Genre | soft rock | |||
| Length | 3:14 | |||
| Label | Atco | |||
| Writer(s) | Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper | |||
| Producer(s) | Margo Siegel & Margo & Medress & Appell Productions | |||
| Cross Country singles chronology | ||||
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| "In the Midnight Hour" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Roxy Music | ||||
| from the album Flesh and Blood | ||||
| B-side | "Flesh and Blood" (USA) "Rain Rain Rain" (Portugal) |
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| Released | December 1980 | |||
| Genre | Pop/Rock | |||
| Length | 3:12 | |||
| Label | Polydor/E.G. | |||
| Writer(s) | Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper | |||
| Producer(s) | Rhett Davies & Roxy Music | |||
| Roxy Music singles chronology | ||||
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"In the Midnight Hour" is a song originally performed by Wilson Pickett in 1965 and released on his 1965 album of the same name, also appearing on the 1966 album The Exciting Wilson Pickett. The song was composed by Pickett and Steve Cropper at the historic Lorraine Motel in Memphis where Martin Luther King, Jr. would later be assassinated in April 1968. Pickett's first hit on Atlantic Records, it reached #1 on the R&B charts and peaked at #21 on the pop charts.
In 2017, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant."
Wilson Pickett recorded "In the Midnight Hour" at Stax Studios, Memphis, 12 May 1965. The song's co-writer Steve Cropper recalls: "[Atlantic Records president] Jerry Wexler said he was going to bring down this great singer Wilson Pickett" to record at Stax Studio where Cropper was a session guitarist "and I didn’t know what groups he'd been in or whatever. But I used to work in [a] record shop, and I found some gospel songs that Wilson Pickett had sung on. On a couple [at] the end, he goes: 'I'll see my Jesus in the midnight hour! Oh, in the midnight hour. I'll see my Jesus in the midnight hour.'" and Cropper got the idea of using the phrase "in the midnight hour" as the basis for an R&B song. More likely, Cropper was remembering the Falcon's 1962 song "I Found a Love," on which Pickett sings lead and says "And sometimes I call in the midnight hour!" The only gospel record Pickett had appeared on before this was the Violinaires' "Sign of the Judgement," which includes no such phrase.
Besides Cropper the band on "In the Midnight Hour" featured Stax session regulars Al Jackson (drums) and Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass). According to Cropper, Wexler was responsible for the track's innovative delayed backbeat, as Cropper revamped his planned groove for "In the Midnight Hour" based on a dance step which Wexler demonstrated in the studio - "(quote Cropper) this was the way the kids were dancing; they were putting the accent on two. Basically, we'd been one-beat-accenters with an afterbeat; it was like 'boom dah,' but here was a thing that went 'um-chaw,' just the reverse as far as the accent goes."
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Wikipedia