Me and Bobby McGee Vinyl Memories.

Me and Bobby McGee Vinyl Memories has become a true classic over the years.

A song about love on the road and love lost up near Salinas with a title inspired by a real person, the Jerry Lee Lewis version takes on a whole new meaning for Best Cover Songs.

When I first listened to the Jerry Lee Lewis version, coupled with his "set your piano on fire" arrangement, I instantly claimed this cover version as a one-of-a-kind favorite.

The proof of Kristofferson's talent as a songwriter lies in the fact that songs like this one, along with "Help Me Make It Through The Night," "For The Good Times" and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" have been covered thousands of times by artists from many different genres.

For those of us who would appreciate a single day back in the "Good Old Days" the line in the "Bobby McGee" song "I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday" seems appropriate. But the Jerry Lee Lewis version adds new meaning to the word excitement. In short, Lewis is an artist whose music should be in every music lover's collection.

"Me and Bobby McGee vinyl memories" was written by singer, songwriter, musician, and actor Kris Kristofferson and songwriter/record producer Fred Foster.

Foster had a bit of a crush on Barbara "Bobbie" McKee who was a secretary on Nashville's music row. When he pitched the title to Kristofferson, he misheard the name as "Me and Bobby McGee," and the name stuck.

Roger Miller was the original recording artist for “Me and Bobby McGee,” and he had a hit with it in 1969 when it went to #12 on the U.S. Country chart. Miller's recording led to a huge influx of interest from other singers of all different genres. 

In the original version, Bobby McGee is a woman. Janis Joplin, who was a close friend of Kristofferson, liked the song, changed Bobby McGee into a man, and added her own special ending. Due to the gender-neutral name of "Bobby" male and female artists were eager to cover the song. It could tell a completely different story depending on who is singing it.

Though it’s been recorded hundreds of times, and by great artists, my favorite being the Jerry Lee Lewis version, it remains Janis’ version which matters most. Because, as Kris says, she made it her own. It remains one of the most powerful intersections of a miracle song with a powerful performance by Joplin.

I spent time listening to and watching every version of this song I could find. If you listen to the many cover versions of the song it's easy to see how Janis Joplin made the song her own but for pure excitement, and a fantastic arrangement, no one comes close to the Jerry Lee Lewis cover. 

Kris Kristofferson wrote the song while working down in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time he was flying a helicopter around Baton Rouge. That is probably why Baton Rouge and New Orleans were in it.

But it was an idea that Fred Foster had given to Kris. He called up one time when Kris was about to go back down to the gulf for another week of flying and he said, “I got a song tile for you: “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Songwriter, Boudleaux Bryant, had an office in Fred’s building. Fred owned Monument Records and Columbine, which Kris was writing for at the time. And Boudleaux’s secretary was named Bobbie McKee. Kris thought he said “McGee.” And he told Kris to go write the song.

But then Kristofferson said the idea just started growing in my head. And I can remember when the last line came to me. I was driving to the airport in New Orleans, and the windshield wipers were going into the line about “the windshield wipers slapping time and Bobbie clapping hands…” And it finished the song for me.

Kris returned to Nashville and found Billy Swan back at Columbine Music. He was the only guy who was still there when Kris got back. So they stayed up all night making the demo of it. It just blew Fred away.

But there was one problem. Fred told Kris "Bobby McGee" is a she! Kris thought he had start over. But after talking it over Kris found inspiration for his lyrics from a film.

Kris was thinking of it as two people traveling around. He thought of the movie La Strada with Anthony Quinn. He’s traveling around and (Italian actress) Giuletta Masina, is the feeble-minded girl playing the trombone. He leaves her by the side of the road. She’s kind of half-witted, and he’s getting tired of taking care of her so he leaves her there.

Later in the film he hears this song she used to play. This woman, who’s hanging out the wash and singing this melody this girl used to play on her trombone. He asks her where she learned that song. And she said, “There was this little girl who came into the village, and nobody knew where she came from, and she died.”

Later in the movie you see Anthony Quinn out there in this tavern, getting into fights. He goes out on the beach and ends up howling at the stars. It was like a double-edge sword of freedom. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. He left her sleeping by the road and pushed his motorcycle off so he wouldn't wake her up. But then he lost her.

And that was the feeling Kris wanted to get out of “Bobby McGee”: Freedom’s just another word for nothing. Nothing left to lose.

Kris Kristofferson didn’t write “Me And Bobby McGee” with Janis Joplin in mind.

Kristofferson knew Joplin and they hung out together for a couple of months but he didn’t even know she’d recorded the song.

In a 2008 interview with songperformer, Kris said "The first time I heard Janis Joplin’s version was right after she died. Paul Rothchild, her producer, asked me to stop by his office and listen to this thing she had cut. Afterwards, I walked all over L.A., just in tears. I couldn’t listen to the song without really breaking up."

Kristofferson might not have written the song for her, but she took the song and turned it into a song about herself. In Joplin’s song, Bobby McGee is a man, though that doesn’t much matter. And while Joplin might’ve never hitchhiked across the country with anyone named Bobby McGee, she still took the specific details of the song, and she made them universal. She did what great interpreters do. In the end, “Me And Bobby McGee vinyl memories” is really a song about Janis Joplin, because that’s what Janis Joplin made it.

As “Me And Bobby McGee” is winding down, Joplin finally hits the moment where the song turns definitively sad: “I’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday, to be holding Bobby’s body next to mine.” She wouldn’t have many tomorrow’s left. Joplin finished recording “Bobby McGee” on October 1, 1970. It was included on her album Pearl....Three days later, she was dead.

By 1971, her version of “Me and Bobby McGee” rose up the charts to #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. "Bobby McGee" became Joplin's only number one hit and is widely considered one of the greatest songs of all time.

Janis Joplin was a terribly romantic figure, and her life story reads like a myth. By design or by accident, Joplin's version of the song captured the romanticism of the life she lived, as well as the bad choices that came with that life. It’s impossible to separate her version of the song from her death. In a way, it’s almost like she wrote her own epitaph.