June 22 - Me and Bobby McGee

OK - so today isn't prog, but it is good music and I can't pass this by. Today a great songwriter and artist turns 80, and I want to wish Kris Kristofferson a very happy birthday. My first encounter with his music was with Janis Joplin's Pearl album and the song Me and Bobby McGee, which sounds like it was tailored to her. However, he wrote it for Roger Miller (of King of the Road fame). Janis picked it up as well, as she was dating Kris Kristofferson until her death - but today I am bringing it to you as the songwriter himself performed it.

Actually, Kris Kristofferson has something in common with another of his partners in crime of the Highwaymen - Willie Nelson - as both of them got started as songwriters for others. Kristofferson's best known songs tend to be made popular by others, such as Johnny Cash singing Sunday Morning Coming Down and Sammi Smith taking Help Me Make It Through The Night to the top of US country charts in 1971. To me, his lyrics are spectacular - such as the line from The Pilgrim, which he wrote about Johnny Cash: He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. I love the way he turns a phrase - and some of that is also present in the song of the day, which includes one of life's most paradoxical truths (and I do hold it to be very true): Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

I really like Kris Kristofferson a lot, and I am very happy to be able to play Me and Bobby McGee today, on his 80th birthday.