“Me And Bobby McGee” may not have been written by Janis Joplin, but her otherworldly voice took the song to new heights in 1971. On this day, March 20, 1971, Janis Joplin hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with her cover of “Me And Bobby McGee”.
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Sadly, it was a bittersweet accomplishment. The song, written by Kris Kristofferson, was released posthumously. That was just a few months after Joplin passed away from an overdose on October 4, 1970. She was only 27 years old. And in the years since, the posthumous album Pearl has been hailed as one of the defining works of the 1970s.
Joplin’s rendition of “Me And Bobby McGee” stayed at No. 1 for two weeks. It remained on the Hot 100 for a total of 15 weeks. Let’s take a look back at the song’s origins and how it fell into Joplin’s lap, not long before she left this world.
The Magic Power of Janis Joplin’s Cut of “Me And Bobby McGee”
“Me And Bobby McGee” was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, and was originally performed by singer Roger Miller. Miller’s version was a modest success, peaking at No. 12 on the US country charts in 1969. Kenny Rogers (with The First Edition) recorded the song that year as well, as did Gordon Lightfoot and The Statler Brothers. Naturally, Kristofferson himself also recorded a version. But when it comes to what the collective masses remember, “Me And Bobby McGee” was a Janis Joplin song. And Kristofferson himself did not know that she recorded a version of the song until after her death. The story goes that producer Paul Rothschild played Kristofferson Joplin’s version. This was fairly shortly after it was announced that she had passed.
“I had to leave the room,” Kristofferson said. “It was impossibly hard to hear. There was so much love and emotion going into the song, and then knowing that she wasn’t there to enjoy that. I left his office and walked around the block. I don’t know where I walked.”
When Janis Joplin topped the Hot 100 with her version of the song in 1971, she broke a record. She was only the second posthumously released single in chart history to reach No. 1 in the United States, after “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” by Otis Redding.
Photo by Tucker Ransom/Archive Photos/Getty Images
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