The 4th Pip: “Midnight Train to Georgia” - Part I

An evening at the Apollo Theater with the self-proclaimed “4th Pip,” the man who inspired the Midnight Train to Georgia.

NYC. Summer. 1985.

It was a Learning Annex adult-education event, held at a packed Apollo Theater on 125th Street. It was entitled “Stories from the Midnight Train (Dreams Don’t Always Come True... Nah-ah... No-oh)”

The instructor was a short Black man in his early 40s, prematurely greying, amply goateed, with horn-rimmed Cornell West glasses, a mustard c…