So we stayed up all night making the demo of it. Found Billy Swan back at Columbine Music, he was the only guy who was still there when I got back to Nashville. 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.Īnd I went back. And I can remember when the last line came to me.
So I had to hide for a couple months.īut then the idea just started growing in my head. It gives me the worst case of writer’s block that I’d ever seen. I thought he said “McGee.” And he told me to go write the song. And Boudleaux’s secretary was named Bobbie McKee. Fred was the guy who owned Monument Records and Columbine, which I was writing for at the time. He called up one time when I 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.”īoudleaux Bryant, the songwriter, had an office in Fred’s building. These pics are from such locations as Frankfurt and Siegen, Germany and Durness, Scotland where Allison Crowe headlined the 'Northern Lights Festival', a benefit for the John Lennon Memorial Garden.But it was an idea that Fred Foster had given to me. Images are from Billie Woods, ( ), the terrifically talented photographer who regularly tours Europe with Crowe. Yet, performed the same way by almost anyone else, the same tactic would come off as too precious by half." Listen to her inflected pronunciation of 'Baton Rouge' in the first line, 'Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train.' It makes this version of the song her own from that point, giving the song a richer, more complex flavor than those rendered in flat Midwestern intonations. "Although Allison introduces over a dozen significant adaptations to 'Me and Bobby McGee,' I'll point out only one nuance. It is definitely not an Allison Crowe kind of song. So did The Grateful Dead and Dolly Parton. Kenny Rogers, when he was still the Kenny Rogers in Kenny Rogers & The First Edition, sang it, as did Gordon Lightfoot, Bill Haley & His Comets, Sam The Sham, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash. Me and Bobby McGee is a Kristofferson-Joplin-Miller kind of song. Nor would it have been on my Possible Allison Crowe Covers #101-200″ list, nor the #201 to 300″ list. radiating dangerous levels of wholesomeness), 'Me and Bobby McGee would not have been on my list. If Allison had asked me to select 100 possible covers for her to play in a concert, a real concert with a fancy piano set in the converted church chapel of the Conservatory of Music in Victoria, British Columbia, a concert that would become the album, Allison Crowe Live At Wood Hall (with album art. "Also noteworthy, however, is the choice of this song itself.
" 'Me and Bobby McGee,' the song authored by Kris Kristofferson and popularized by Janis Joplin (although Roger Miller's version was the first to rank as a hit), is not one of my favorites, but it is useful as an example of Allison Crowe's skills, in part because most readers of this blog have, I suspect, heard it sung by at least a couple of performers. Then, for something completely different, listen to her take on Ronnie Shannon's 'I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)', which is (forgive me, Aretha) the best I've heard. If you haven't heard her powerful yet not strident version of 'Hallelujah'. Showalter explains: "Of course, the credentials that matter most are her performances. "Allison Crowe is the best thing to happen to 'Me And Bobby McGee' since Janis Joplin changed Kristofferson's lyrics," says Allan Showalter of "Cohencentric" blog ( ), noted as “arguably the greatest living (Leonard) Cohen expert”. Canadian musician Allison Crowe performs live in concert "Me and Bobby McGee", the Fred Foster, Kris Kristofferson song recorded most famously, iconically, by Janis Joplin.
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