And his love of the game led to his greatest success in music, with first a young Farrah Fawcett and finally a legendary recording of his tune “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Weatherly, who also wrote songs for Ray Price, Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers and others, died Wednesday at his home in Brentwood, Tennessee, near Nashville, family friend Charlie Monk told the Tennessean newspaper.
He was 77 and his family told Monk that Weatherly died of natural causes.
Weatherly was born in Mississippi and played in the football team of the University of Mississippi in an unbeaten season of 1962, an SEC championship and a national championship. The following year he was the starting quarterback when the Rebels repeated as SEC champions.
Weatherly called the Majors ‘house one day and the actor’s girlfriend, who would become Farrah Fawcett-Majors’ star “Charlie’s Angel”, answered. She said she would take “the midnight plane to Houston” and visit her family.
“A small bell went off,” Weatherly told the NSAI. “Sounded like a song title to me.”
He wrote ‘Midnight Plane to Houston’ as a country song and never thought it would become an R&B hit. By the time it reached Gladys Knight & the Pips, the title and style had changed, and it had become a Grammy-winning classic.
“I’m surprised it lasted the way it did,” Weatherly told the NSAI. “It’s a timeless record.”
Knight and the Pips also had hits with Weatherly songs “None of Us” and “Best Thing That Each Happened to Me.”
On Friday, Knight tweeted, “I miss Jim Weatherly already. He was about life and love … We were just made for each other. We extended our lives together. I’ll miss him terribly and always love him.”
According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Weatherly has a pop and adult contemporary hit with ‘The Need to Be’ and a country hit with ‘I’ll still love you’. He was inaugurated in 2014. ‘Midnight Train’ is one of Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest songs of all time.