55 Years Ago, Janis Joplin Was at No. 1 With a Posthumous Album Driven by a Kris Kristofferson-Penned Hit

Fifty-five years ago today (April 1), in 1971, Janis Joplin was on a nine-week run at the top of the Billboard 200 with Pearl. The popularity of her No. 1 rendition of the Kris Kristofferson-penned “Me and Bobby McGee” helped push the album to the top of the chart.

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Joplin recorded Pearl in a series of sessions between June 27 and October 1, 1970. She died just days later, on October 4. At the time, she hadn’t finished recording all of her vocals for the LP. As a result, “Buried Alive in the Blues” is an instrumental. Songwriter Nick Gravenites later recorded it with Joplin’s former band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, for their album How Hard It Is.

[RELATED: Behind the Song That Introduced the World to the Brilliance of Janis Joplin]

Pearl was Joplin’s second solo album and showed how much she had grown as an artist since releasing her solo debut, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama, in 1969. The cleaner production, the presence of her Full Tilt Boogie Band, and her tragic passing helped push the album to quadruple Platinum status. The album’s quality and success are bittersweet, though. Pearl left generations of music fans wondering what could have come of Joplin’s career had it and her life not been cut so horribly short.
 

Janis Joplin Recorded the Definitive Version of “Me and Bobby McGee” for Pearl

Kris Kristofferson didn’t write “Me and Bobby McGee” with Janis Joplin in mind. Instead, according to Songfacts, he wrote it after Combine Music owner Fred Foster pitched him the title. “You could make this thing about them traveling around, the hook is that he turns out to be a she,” Foster told him.

“I thought there was no way I could ever write that, and it took me months hiding from him, because I can’t write on assignment,” Kristofferson said. “But it must have stuck in the back of my head. One day, I was driving between Morgan City and New Orleans. It was raining, and the windshield wipers were going. I took an old experience with another girl in another country. I had finished by the time I got to Nashville,” he recalled.

Country legend Roger Miller was the first to cut the song. Then, Kristofferson recorded a version for his 1970 debut album. Joplin, though, recorded the definitive version. More than five decades later, most music fans think of her when they think of “Me and Bobby McGee.” The same was true for Kristofferson. “Every time I sing it, I still think of Janis,” he said in 2015.

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