“He drops the needle, and when that voice comes in, ‘Busted flat in Baton Rouge,’ I nearly fell out of my chair,” Foster recalls. Foster had no idea that Joplin had also cut the song for her posthumous 1971 album “Pearl,” until he talked to legendary producer Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records. “Then I started hearing it on the radio and I would just go crazy every time I heard that song,” Eden said.īut the real turning point for the song was Joplin’s cover. Kristofferson released his own version in his debut album “Kristofferson” with Monument Records in 1970. Kristofferson played the song for Roger Miller, a country-pop singer who was the first artist to cut it in 1969, and made it a Top 12 country hit. But I just thought it was the most fantastic song I had ever heard.”
Kris said he couldn’t sing very good, but he’ll try. “Fred came in and said, ‘I want you to meet the real Bobby McKee and here’s Kris Kristofferson to sing your song for you,’” Eden said, laughing. In Joplin’s version, she switched the genders and made Bobby a man.Įden remembers the day that Kristofferson and Foster came into the office to sing her the song. Kristofferson apparently took his own liberties, changing McKee to McGee, and invented a road song story about a pair of travelers who drifted apart. In 1969, Foster called up Kristofferson with the song title idea with the hook that Bobby was a woman. “He was so intelligent, so gifted, so talented and he didn’t sound like anybody I had ever heard,” Foster said. After hearing some of his songs, Foster said he would only hire Kristofferson as a songwriter if he also signed a record deal. He had been trying to break through as a songwriter, even working as a janitor in a Music Row recording studio. Kristofferson was one of Foster’s newest hires, a Texas-born athlete and Army veteran who loved William Blake.
“It seemed like he liked to tease me a little bit and one day he said, ’I am going to write a song about me and Bobbie McKee,” Eden said. I think you’re coming to see Bobbie,’” Foster said. “So I ran down about the fourth or fifth time this particular day and Boudleaux says, ‘I don’t think you’re coming to see me at all. McKee, whose last name is now Eden, was a 29-year-old working as Bryant’s secretary and went by the nickname Bobbie. In the 1960s, Foster moved his record label Monument Records from Washington, D.C., to Tennessee in a building owned by his friend and songwriter Boudleaux Bryant. Foster helped launch the careers of artists like Kristofferson, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton.
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