{"id":76751,"date":"2025-09-21T09:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/76751\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T09:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:33:14","slug":"the-story-of-the-janis-joplin-kris-kristofferson-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/76751\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of the Janis Joplin, Kris Kristofferson song."},"content":{"rendered":"

Before he was an outlaw-country pioneer and a movie star, and after he was a Rhodes scholar and a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army, the jarringly handsome young man was a janitor in Nashville, for Columbia Records, where he picked up Bob Dylan\u2019s empty coffee cups. (He avoided chatter with the superstar for fear of losing his job.) After that, in the employ of Petroleum Helicopters International, he flew workers to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. It was during such unsettled circumstances that Kris Kristofferson had written his latest song, the one that put him in the catbird seat. The \u201cgreat ride<\/a>,\u201d he\u2019d say, had begun. The composition was being covered as fast as contracts would allow. The up-and-comer\u2019s words were in the mouths of giants: Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers, Gordon Lightfoot.<\/p>\n

The latest version, recorded by a woman with whom Kristofferson had been intimate\u2014her bedsheets shredded by his cowboy boots<\/a> during a weeks-long affair\u2014was different. Janis Joplin was neither country like Miller and Rogers, nor folk like Lightfoot: She was blues, and she was rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. As he listened to the voice of Joplin, Kristofferson was bothered by the hard-living Texan\u2019s version of the song\u2014the version that he knew, even then, would obliterate the rest. \u201cPrivately,\u201d wrote one chronicler, \u201che cringed at the alterations she made to the lyrics to fit her vocals\u2014and gender<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Joplin\u2019s cover, Bobby McGee was now a man. The woman who\u2019d been the catalyst for the song\u2014whom Kristofferson barely knew\u2014was erased.<\/p>\n

When Barbara \u201cBobbie\u201d Lewis was growing up, the number of local amusements were limited: movies at the Mi-De-Ga; baseball games each Sunday between the town\u2019s Black team and white team; the Humphreys County fair that came around each September, with concessions and square dancing<\/a>. Her hometown of Waverly, with barely 1,000 citizens, was essentially a speck on the map of Tennessee. Still, there was an outsize musical current coursing through the place. Waverly\u2019s own George Morgan, who crooned the chart-topping \u201cCandy Kisses<\/a>,\u201d was a friend of the Lewis family. Ralph Emery, born in nearby McEwen, was on his way to a distinguished career as \u201cthe Dick Clark of country music<\/a>.\u201d Fiddlin\u2019 Arthur Smith, a mainstay of the Grand Ole Opry, could be seen dynamiting fish on Trace Creek<\/a> just a few miles outside of town. Legends sometimes passed through, too, drawn to the area\u2019s renown for hunting and fishing. Bobbie would spy Hank Williams by the Tennessee River dock and Johnny Cash striding down the street with June. The singer-songwriter Little Jimmy Dickens once performed on the courthouse lawn.<\/p>\n

Despite her quiet mien, Bobbie was comfortable in front of a crowd, performing as a majorette for Waverly\u2019s Central High School. Predictably, perhaps, given her surroundings, she was interested in music\u2014and not just casually. She\u2019d sing country and western in festivals, accompanied by her father on guitar, and sometimes with her older sister, Joyce, as well. Bobbie even performed at her own senior prom. \u201cWe kind of figured she was going somewhere,\u201d a classmate recalled to me. \u201cShe could sing music in a way that would make you appreciate the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobbie had designs on a career, but it wasn\u2019t in the cards. By her own estimation, she sounded like Brenda Lee, but that wasn\u2019t sufficient when the real McCoy had gone platinum. Anyway, she believed the life of a singer wasn\u2019t suitable for a family-minded woman. After high school, Bobbie looked for work outside Waverly, and made peace with not seeing her name in lights. As she told me recently, \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure I would ever make it big.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobbie married a man named Robert McKee and, in her late 20s, took a job far from home, in Hendersonville, just outside of Nashville. A friend had introduced her to Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, the husband-and-wife songwriting team who supplied the Everly Brothers and others with smashes, including \u201cBye Bye Love<\/a>,\u201d \u201cWake Up Little Susie<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cAll I Have to Do Is Dream<\/a>.\u201d Boudleaux happened to be in need of a secretary. He\u2019d give Barbara lyrics to type up after he and Felice emerged from their office, songs in hand after a spree of productivity.<\/p>\n

While Boudleaux owned the building, most of it was occupied by his friend Fred Foster. Foster, co-founder of Monument Records, made his mark on both rock \u2019n\u2019 roll and country by signing Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Roy Orbison, for whom he produced \u201cRunning Scared<\/a>\u201d and \u201cOh, Pretty Woman<\/a>.\u201d He was an iconoclast willing to take a chance on people. In 1968, he was working on the Bryant-written album Polynesian Suite with steel-guitar whiz Jerry Byrd. As a money-saving measure, Foster recalled, he and Byrd decided to record with an orchestra in Mexico, rather than in Nashville. This required sorting through international rules and union laws, which meant Foster was constantly walking the 50 feet to Boudleaux\u2019s office. He noticed the new secretary. \u201cShe was,\u201d he said, \u201ca very attractive young lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boudleaux clocked Foster\u2019s interest in Bobbie, and that his friend wasn\u2019t daunted by the secretary\u2019s marital status. \u200b\u200b\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re coming to see me,\u201d he ribbed Foster. \u201cI think you\u2019re coming to see Bobbie.\u201d The producer, a bit smitten, thought of a novel way to demonstrate his affection. What he did next, he\u2019d recount, in some form or another, for decades.<\/p>\n

Among those to whom Foster would tell the story was me, in 2014, because I had hoped to find Barbara McKee and write about her for the New Yorker. \u201cI ran up the steps, and by the time I got to my office, the whole idea had come to me,\u201d said Foster, then in his early 80s. (He died in 2019.) The idea was to call Kris Kristofferson, who was top of mind because he\u2019d been complaining of a dry spell. Indeed, Kristofferson was estranged from his family due to myriad failures, including as a songwriter. Would he consider writing something called \u201cMe and Bobbie McKee\u201d?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something rather glorious about a song inspired by a mundane, unrequited workplace crush (or so it would have been seen as, at the time) being so beautiful. It seems, even now, like a fluke, with Foster giving Kristofferson only a title and no further guidance.<\/p>\n

Kristofferson, faced with such a challenge, got writer\u2019s block for months. And yet, the song came together, in fits and starts. It was a mournful first-person tale of a pair of hitchhikers traveling across America, making stops in New Orleans, Kentucky, and Salinas.<\/p>\n

Kristofferson wrote the opening verse, in which \u201cBobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,\u201d in a car during a downpour in Louisiana. The line in the second verse about \u201cwindshield wipers slappin\u2019 time\u201d was written in the car, too, this time on the way to the airport. The words for which the song is best known\u2014\u201cFreedom\u2019s just another word for nothin\u2019 left to lose\u201d\u2014were inspired by the final scene of Federico Fellini\u2019s La Strada. Anthony Quinn\u2019s Zampan\u00f2 has abandoned Giulietta Masina\u2019s Gelsomina as she slept. As Kristofferson told Performing Songwriter<\/a> in 2008:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Songwriter Fred Foster poses with Barbara \u201cBobbie\u201d Eden, formerly McKee, at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
\nAP\/Mark Humphrey<\/p>\n

\n

Later in the film, he sees this woman hanging out the wash and singing the melody that the girl used to play on the trombone. He asks, \u2018Where did you hear that song?\u2019 And she tells him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from, and later she died. That night, Quinn goes to a bar and gets in a fight. He\u2019s drunk and ends up howling at the stars on the beach. To me, that was the feeling at the end of \u201cBobby McGee.\u201d The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the rhythm, Kristofferson was influenced by Mickey Newbury\u2019s \u201cWhy You Been Gone So Long?\u201d As for the song\u2019s general narrative, of the hitchhikers\u2019 journey across the country, Kristofferson said in an early interview<\/a> that the inspiration was a road trip with a woman in Europe.<\/p>\n

The ins and outs of the song were unknown to Bobbie, but she knew Kristofferson was working on it, and wasn\u2019t bothered that Foster hadn\u2019t sought her permission. She trusted him. But her expectations for it weren\u2019t high. Bobbie was aware of Kristofferson\u2019s talent by reputation, but all she really knew, she told me, was \u201che was the best lookin\u2019 thing I\u2019d ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the song was finished, Kristofferson came to the office. Upon answering the door, Foster held out his hands\u2014he always talked with his hands\u2014and grandly introduced the songwriter to the secretary. Bobbie nearly fainted as she took in the blue jeans, the big belt buckle, the white T-shirt. She fetched a guitar for him and tried to regain her composure. He played for her, Boudleaux Bryant, and Foster\u2014to whom Kristofferson had given half the writing credit out of gratitude. It was one of the great highlights of her life.<\/p>\n

When Barbara and I talked in August, I asked what her reaction had been to hearing \u201cMe and Bobby McGee\u201d for the first time. (Kristofferson claimed to have misheard<\/a> Bobbie\u2019s last name on the call with Foster.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I didn\u2019t know how to act\u2014I\u2019ll just be honest with you,\u201d she said. \u201cYou just sit there and you listen, and you think, Oh, my goodness!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1969, Kristofferson and his wife divorced, and he decamped from Nashville to work on Dennis Hopper\u2019s The Last Movie, filming in Peru. In his absence, the song flew around the city before he even got a chance to record it himself. \u201cIn those days, everybody would jump on a song if they thought it could be a hit,\u201d said Michael McCall, associate director of editorial for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum<\/a>. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t unusual for the same song to be on the charts by two, three different people until one of them broke through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roger Miller, introduced to Kristofferson\u2019s work by Mickey Newbury, recorded it first<\/a>, and saw the track hit No. 12 on the country chart in 1969. Kenny Rogers and the First Edition<\/a> took a stab at it around the same time, and released it on Ruby, Don\u2019t Take Your Love to Town. Canadian star Gordon Lightfoot<\/a>, who wasn\u2019t prone to covering the work of others, got wind of \u201cMe and Bobby McGee,\u201d too, and recorded it toward the end of the year. His version, in which he mispronounced Salinas with a long i, hit both the pop and country charts.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    The Unlikely Story of the Secretary Who Inspired One of Music\u2019s Greatest Songs
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n <\/p>\n

    I Can\u2019t Believe That NBC Let Jordan Peele Make This Movie
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  3. \n
    \n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

    Please, Lord, Do Not Make Me Roll Hard for Jimmy Kimmel
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  4. \n <\/p>\n

    Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s Suspension Was a Shock. Late-Night Hosts Have Thrown Down the Gauntlet in Response.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Kristofferson would not release his own track until the summer of 1970, on his debut album Kristofferson. \u201cMe and Bobby McGee<\/a>\u201d was in the company of works that would cement the songwriter\u2019s reputation: \u201cSunday Mornin\u2019 Comin\u2019 Down<\/a>,\u201d \u201cHelp Me Make It Through the Night<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cFor the Good Times<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Until this point, everyone had been faithful to the original lyrics of \u201cMe and Bobby McGee.\u201d But this was a time when songs were frequently passed from musician to musician by memory.<\/p>\n

    Bob Neuwirth, a songwriter and artist (but maybe best known as Bob Dylan\u2019s partner in crime in Don\u2019t Look Back), was visiting the office of Dylan\u2019s manager Albert Grossman. He struck up a conversation with Lightfoot, who happened to be in town. Lightfoot took out his guitar and played a new song, Neuwirth told Janis Joplin biographer Holly George-Warren. Neuwirth loved it, asked Lightfoot to teach him the song, and wrote down the lyrics. That night, Neuwirth met up with Joplin, and taught her \u201cMe and Bobby McGee\u201d as she readied herself for dinner.<\/p>\n

    In mid-December, Joplin and her band played it to a welcoming Nashville concert crowd. She played it in Austin, too. \u201cThis is a song by a good friend of mine,\u201d she told the audience. \u201cHe\u2019s gonna be very famous in about\u2014I give him a year<\/a>.\u201d Then, in the fall, she entered a studio in Hollywood, California. She\u2019d recently recorded a birthday song for John Lennon<\/a>, and her voice was strong and boisterous. Joplin began to strum. \u201cBusted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin\u2019 for a train \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

    Already, the lyrics were altered; Kristofferson wrote<\/a> \u201cheadin\u2019 for the trains,\u201d but Joplin used<\/a> phrasing reminiscent of Jimmie Rodgers<\/a>. \u201cTook us all the way to New Orleans\u201d became \u201crode us all the way into New Orleans. \u201cBlowin\u2019 sad\u201d became \u201cplaying soft.\u201d Joplin\u2019s version had a new intimacy. Whereas Kristofferson wrote \u201cBobby clappin\u2019 hands,\u201d she sang \u201cI was holdin\u2019 Bobby\u2019s hand in mine.\u201d Her version is leaner, too: \u201cFrom the coal mines of Kentucky\u201d became \u201cFrom the Kentucky coalmine.\u201d But the biggest difference was with Bobby herself.<\/p>\n

    Joplin died nine days later of a heroin overdose. \u201cMe and Bobby McGee<\/a>\u201d became her biggest hit, reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100 six months later. \u201cNow every time someone sings the song, they don\u2019t get the words right,\u201d Kristofferson groused to a journalist years later. \u201cBut God knows, that was a great record<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \n Jack Hamilton
    \n I\u2019ve Hated Billy Joel for Decades, but HBO\u2019s Big New Doc at Least Made Me Realize Something
    \n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n

    In 1980, a decade after the release of his \u201cMe and Bobby McGee,\u201d Kristofferson said that more than a dozen women<\/a> had at one time or another claimed to be the Barbara McKee. But there was only one, her identity an open secret in Nashville. This brought Bobbie a certain amount of local celebrity, especially because Foster and Kristofferson kept telling her story, and the covers kept piling up: the Grateful Dead<\/a>, Dolly Parton<\/a>, Bridget Everett and Patti LuPone<\/a> (the duo crooning, briefly, into a dildo), Pink<\/a>. But she had no desire to cash in on it, to seek attention. Like her fictional alter ego, she slipped away, and it wasn\u2019t until 2016 that a reporter from the Associated Press got her on the record<\/a>. Ever modest, Bobbie focused on what she\u2019d sparked, rather than on herself.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI just thought,\u201d she said, \u201cit was the most fantastic song I had ever heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before he was an outlaw-country pioneer and a movie star, and after he was a Rhodes scholar and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[9376,18,117,5489,19,17,337,6318],"class_list":{"0":"post-76751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-country-music","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-rock"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}