3/27/2023 1 Comment Pink me and bobby mcgee itunes![]() ![]() Fred Foster shares the writing credit, as Kristofferson wrote the song based on a suggestion from Foster. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record." Me and Bobby McGee" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great night.Ĭopyright © 2013 NPR. Check for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR app. LYDEN: And for Saturday, that's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. LYDEN: Today would have been Janis Joplin's 70th birthday. SYDELL: Echols thinks it's no accident that they've been trying to make a movie about Joplin for years but still haven't found anyone who can play the part. And I don't think they ever will, because there's something in her voice that can't be replicated. Yet, biographer Alice Echols says she really has no imitators.ĮCHOLS: Nobody has come close to capturing the way that that girl sang. She was the first woman to make it big in rock. She began to take more control of her voice. SYDELL: Many critics say it was Joplin's best album. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ME AND BOBBY MCGEE") SYDELL: That winter, Joplin's record label released her last album, "Pearl." "Me and Bobby McGee" topped the charts. She was really beginning to be a really serious musician and singer. NELSON: I was kind of pissed off, because she had gone beyond that. One night, she went back to her Los Angeles hotel room and shot up. In early October of 1970, just a little over three years since she hit it big, Joplin was making an album with a new band. ![]() SYDELL: Unfortunately, many of the artists of the 1960s who emulated the blues also emulated the drug habits of blues musicians. As she told Cavett, singing was the only way she could express how she felt. SYDELL: So maybe it's not surprising that Joplin fell in love with the blues, especially Bessie Smith, Leadbelly and Big Mama Thornton. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DICK CAVETT SHOW") In an appearance in 1970 on "The Dick Cavett Show," she spoke bitterly about her adolescence. She had bad skin, and she wasn't conventionally pretty. She didn't fit in to the conformist 1950s. SYDELL: In fact, Joplin had a hard time growing up in Texas. And using that pretty voice is not going to get me very far. And the calculation was, you know what, I'm not pretty like Judy Collins or Maria Muldaur. SYDELL: But the young singer didn't believe she could make it as a folkie, says Alice Echols, the author of a Joplin biography called "Scars of Sweet Paradise."ĪLICE ECHOLS: Janis Joplin made a calculation. When she left for college in 1960, her models were folkies - singers like Joan Baez and Judy Collins. She was a featured singer in the church choir. SYDELL: It's not how Joplin started out singing. SYDELL: Like a lot of white musicians at the time, Joplin was trying to sing like a black blues musician.ĬHRISTGAU: Not too many of them were very convincing in that role. ROBERT CHRISTGAU: I very much remember her playing in the sunshine, and everyone really not just excited but kind of flabbergasted at how intense it was. SYDELL: Among the 1,200 journalists covering the festival was critic Robert Christgau, who was then writing for Esquire magazine. They were pretty much a local San Francisco band until they played the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967. SYDELL: Joplin was fronting a group called Big Brother and The Holding Company. And I'm standing out there listening to her, and I was just thinking: Man, this is a force of nature. SYDELL: Janis Joplin and Tracy Nelson shared a bill at the Avalon Ballroom. SYDELL: That same year, another woman artist was trying to bust through the paternalistic San Francisco culture. You know, why not just stay home, find a man, love, you know, just this kind of (bleep) that I didn't even think I was ever going to hear again. ![]() ![]() TRACY NELSON: I had I don't know how many musicians tell me: Why do you want to do this? This is no business for a woman. But when singer and songwriter Tracy Nelson arrived in 1966, it wasn't so open for her. Many became megastars: Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Santana. LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: In the mid-1960s, San Francisco was a Mecca for counterculture musicians. She left behind a regrettably short yet incomparable catalog. LYDEN: Janis Joplin died in 1970 at the age of just 27. LYDEN: Janis Joplin would have turned 70 years old on this day. If you're just tuning in, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. ![]()
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