Interesting note: Janis' version of "Me & Bobby McGee" has been accessed 3 times as often as Kris' version. (Sorry, Kris, even though you're the author of the song; Janis wins hands down.) It seems that that's the version more people choose to listen to. Does this mean that it's the version that they first heard? Not sure, but my money's on the probability that it is.
7 comments:
actually, I only had time to listen to the top one before I left for the regular sunday poetry
reading and later art gallery meeting.
I like kris' and I like hers because we're both from Texas-
I'll listen to either ir both anytime.
Kris might have written it and done a great job singing it, but Janis made it her song forever.
Shann,
Indeed, both versions have their own charm.
Patry,
Ain't that the truth! Most of the people that I've spoken to didn't even know that Kris Kristofferson had written the song. Go figure!
In the spring of 1970, Kris Kristofferson played at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, and Bobby Neuwirth had liked his act so much that he brought his friends to see him. Bobby offered to introduce Kris to Janis, suggesting that they hop on a plane immediately and fly to the West Coast. When Neuwirth called Janis she was ready to party and when he told her he had a buddy with him, she told him to bring him along. When they arrived at the party in Larkspur, Kris caught Janis' eye right away. "She thought he was a honey," Sunshine said. He was thirty-four years old and like her, a Texan. He'd hitchhiked around the country and spent years in Nashville, struggling to be a songwriter. His efforts where beginning to pay off when Roger Miller's recording of "Me and Bobby McGee" became a country hit. Johnny Cash recorded Kris' "Sunday Morning Coming Down," and began featuring him on his popular TV show.
Kristofferson and Neuwirth stayed with Janis in Larkspur for a couple of weeks. In that time, all of them hopped through the Sausakito bars and consumed unending amounts of alcohol. Janis often complained about people staying at her place, feeling that she was used for the benefits she could provide. "I'd a split there," Kris protested. "I dug her, but I had itchy feet. I'd get up intending to get out, and in she comes with the early morning drinks and pretty soon you're wasted enough and you don't care about leaving. She'd definitely let ya know when she was being abused, and she thought so a lot. She was always jangling around talking about how everybody was living off of her, but she had people she'd bring into the house and then she'd bitch because she was giving them bed and board."
"Kristofferson wanted her to cut 'Me and Bobby McGee,'" said James Gurley. "He was beginning to make waves with his own career. It's not like that would be his only motivation for hanging around her, but the money from a Joplin record would have come in handy." That spring Janis had a look at the song. "I remember when he introduced 'Me and Bobby McGee' to her," said Dave Richards, who was remodeling the house. "When I got there that day, she said, 'Listen to this song. This is a great song.' She was playing the guitar and sang 'Me and Bobby McGee' to me."
In the month preceding Janis' death, she had a conversation with Kris where she made a threat. "If it doesn't get any better," she'd warned, "I'm gonna go back on junk," and along with that had often talked of suicide. Kris had naturally become very upset, and Janis, in response, had retorted bitterly, "You won't be around. None of 'em will be." In a later conversation, the subject of dope came up. He said, "Man, you got everything going for you. You got a man you love; you got a producer you love. Chicks, artists, never have either one. Why blow it?" Janis said, "What's it all worth?"
After Janis' death, Kris Kristofferson broke down in the studio when he heard "Me and Bobby McGee." The song went on to become her only number one single.
- Information taken from
"Buried Alive" by Myra Friedman and "Pearl" by Ellis Amburn.
Thanks Kim for your take on this! Kris often prefaced his rendition of the song "If it sound "country" - well that's because it's a country song", in many live performances. Hard to compete with Janis though!
how did i get here? oh yeah...looking up Arkansas Good Friday, but then this caught my eye. Nick, i'd make the same bet. In Nashville - esp. pre-1970s Nashville - the various intermediaries in the music business - performer, label, publisher, agent, manager, radio, concert promoter - were rigidly silo'd. This was particularly true of the country music genre, because radio play was the brass ring (LP sales never rivalled those of pop/rock). Since radio had to pay performance license fees for the use of compositions, but not for the use of sound recordings, Publishing was a much hotter business than the country label biz. Besides, the idea of artists cutting their own songs (in other words, writing material that was up to snuff) was for the most part, unimaginable prior to the mass success of the beatles & bob dylan (with notable exceptions, all of them ace singers/musicians). When Kristofferson hit town in 1965, he was no one's idea of a performer, least of all his own. He signed with a small publisher (Buckhorn). When that contract expired, he signed with a bigger outfit - Combine - which had the clout to get his songs in front of name artists like Roger Miller (who had a #12 country hit with Bobby M in 1969). As it happened, Combine *did* have a label affiliation (Monument), to whom they pitched Kristofferson on the typically rapacious music-biz principle of locking down as many rights as possible for the least amount of $. And when 4 of your songs go top 10 country in the course of a year (1969-70), your label boss (Fred Foster) is gonna say "of COURSE you're a performing artist!" . And the world is a slightly better place for it. ...where was i going with this? oh, right: hitherto, the commercial success of Kristofferson's songs had ocurred almost exclusively in country charts with country artists & old-style country arrangements - that is, segregated from the much bigger pop & rock market, and, worryingly, performed by artists at odds with the prevailing "countrypolitan" sound - performers like Roy Price, Faron Young, J Cash & Roger Miller. As such, any crossover to pop/rock was a very remote prospect prior to Janice's version.
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