It remains one of the most powerful intersections of a miracle song with a powerful performance. Because, as Kris says in the following, she made it her own. Sadly, he never heard her recording of it until after she died of a heroin overdose while making the album.

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How It All Began
It's often misinterpreted as Kristofferson's love song to Joplin, because her bluesy rendition has overshadowed all other versions. She recorded the song right before her death in and it topped the U. McKee, whose last name is now Eden, was a year-old working as Bryant's secretary and went by the nickname Bobbie. I think you're coming to see Bobbie,'" Foster said. Kristofferson was one of Foster's newest hires, a Texas-born athlete and Army veteran who loved William Blake. He had been trying to break through as a songwriter, even working as a janitor in a Music Row recording studio. After hearing some of his songs, Foster said he would only hire Kristofferson as a songwriter if he also signed a record deal. In , Foster called up Kristofferson with the song title idea with the hook that Bobby was a woman. Kristofferson apparently took his own liberties, changing McKee to McGee, and invented a road song story about a pair of travelers who drifted apart. In Joplin's version, she switched the genders and made Bobby a man.
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JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. In it, there are two main characters: "Me" and "Bobby McGee," two friends or possibly lovers who are making their way to New Orleans despite their lack of resources. In the first verse of the song, the two travelers are exhausted and waiting for a train, but then they decide to hitchhike to their destination instead. They are picked up just before it starts to rain by a truck driver who takes them all the way to their destination, New Orleans. Along the way, they begin to play the blues, singing every song the driver knows. The next verse takes us back in time, with the speaker remembering her days spent on the road with Bobby up until that moment, traveling cross-country from Tennessee to California. This can be seen as the middle of the story, in which the narrator describes how she and Bobby bared their souls to one another and formed a very intimate bond. Through all kinds of weather, she says—in other words, through experiences both good and bad—Bobby made her feel safe and warm. The song ends, however, on a sadder note.
Forty-five years after Janis Joplin posthumously took the song to No. Newswire reports that producer Fred Foster has confirmed the story behind the song, which started when Foster's friend, songwriter Boudleaux Bryant, teased him that he only visited Bryant's offices to see his secretary, Barbara "Bobby" McKee. Inspired by the wisecrack, Foster approached Kristofferson, then a young songwriter on his roster. As Performing Songwriter detailed in a article, Foster pitched the idea for a song he titled "Me and Bobby McKee" — with the twist in the hook, of course, being that the "Bobby" in question was female.