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songs

Me and Bobby McGee by Kris· Kristofferson (1970)

The mystery: Is Bobby a woman, a man or a guitar?

The real story: Since the song cre- ated a stir in the early 1970s, Bobby has been rumored to be a woman (she was, in Kristofferson's version), a man (yep, in Janis Joplin's version) and, according to some speculation, a guitar. Definitely not that last one, co-writer Fred Foster says. The real Bobby McGee was Barbara McKee,

a woman who worked in an office below Foster.  After he visited her office four times on business, some­ one cracked that Foster was going there to see McKee, whose nick­ name was Bobbie. "Oh," he joked back, "have you heard about me and Bobbie McKee?" As soon as he­ said it, Foster says, he knew he had something. "It had the rhyme in it," the songwriter says. "That struck a chord in me."