Song of the Day 7/7: Roger Miller, “Me and Bobby McGee”

As Jason noted, Marge Greene got the boot from the Freedom Caucus. She’s the winner here — freedom, as Kris Kristofferson assured us, is just another word for nothin’ left to lose, so she’s freer than they are, because they could still lose their membership in the Freedom Caucus. So neener neener.

Kristofferson wrote several songs that have become standards, but “Me and Bobby McGee” is probably the best-known. He arrived in Nashville in 1965 and had written a clutch of country hits, notably “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” before Roger Miller took “Me and Bobby McGee” to No. 12 on the country charts in 1969. Miller, who was well past his heyday by that point, gave it a fairly standard Nashville treatment — note how the harmonica comes in on its lyrical cue.

Technically, the other 300 recorded versions are covers, including Kristofferson’s own. Roy Clark, Charley Pride, Gordon Lightfoot and Kenny Rogers all beat him to the record store shelves; Lightfoot’s single made the Canadian charts. Kristofferson’s version was released on his debut album in 1970. As he noted at the time, “it’s a country song.” Well, it was then.

As Kristofferson told American Songwriter,

I was thinking of it as two people traveling around. I though of the movie La Strada with Anthony Quinn. He’s traveling around with Giuletta Masina in this little funky circus thing they had. 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.

Anyway, he leaves her there. And at the end of the film he hears this song she used to play. And this woman, who’s hanging up laundry, is singing it or whistling it. And he goes up and 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.” And later you see Anthony Quinn out there howling at the stars. It was like a double-edged sword of freedom. He was free from her. He left her sleeping by the road. He wheeled his motorcycle off so he wouldn’t wake her up. But then he lost her.

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

Pithy as it is, the phrase wouldn’t have entered the popular lexicon without Janis Joplin’s sublime cover, which went to No. 1 in the wake of her death in 1971. That kick-started Kristofferson’s solo career. His poor-selling debut LP, re-released and retitled for the song, went to No. 10 on the country album chart, but in Joplin’s hands it’s not a country song anymore.

So when you hear “Freedom Caucus,” remember Kristofferson’s axiom: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing.”