His first single was Me and Bobby McGee which subsequently had a substantial after life. The many artists to have recorded it include its writer Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, Janis Joplin, Charley Pride and Jerry Lee Lewis. Janis Joplin’s version has had over 1,000,000 sales/streams.
Gordon Lightfoot: Me and Bobby McGee
Janis Joplin: Me and Bobbie McGee
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot:17/11/1938 – May 1/5/2023. So it goes.
In the first of this category’s posts I mentioned that Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries had a distinctive voice. There was a distressed quality to it that spoke of demons in the way that Janis Joplin’s also did. O’Riordan’s childhood experiences and subsequent bipolar disorder can perhaps be discerned in her vocal performances.
(Listening to the guitar on this I think Snow Patrol may well have listened to this sort of thing.)
Joplin is one of the members of the seemingly mythical 27 club, which the link states is a spurious artefact. A tendency for musicians to die when 27 is not borne out statistically. Still, print the legend, eh?
