“You can’t think of that song with­out think­ing of Janis,” says Kris Kristof­fer­son of Janis Joplin’s raw, bit­ter­sweet, posthu­mous­ly released “Me and Bob­by McGee.” Kristof­fer­son, who wrote the song, only heard Joplin’s ver­sion after her death, when he returned to Cal­i­for­nia after play­ing the Isle of Wight in 1970. He met the pro­duc­er of Joplin’s last album, Pearl, in L.A., who told him to come to the stu­dio “to play me her record­ing of ‘Bob­by McGee.’ And it just blew me away. Just blew me away.” Above, you can hear a rare record­ing, pos­si­bly the first take, and pos­si­bly one of the ear­ly ver­sions Kristof­fer­son heard in the stu­dio.

Many peo­ple have assumed Kristof­fer­son wrote the song for Joplin, but that’s not the case: he didn’t know she was record­ing it at all. It was writ­ten, in 1969, about a woman, Bar­bara “Bob­by” McK­ee, who worked as a sec­re­tary in song­writer Fred Foster’s build­ing. Fos­ter gave Kristof­fer­son the title “Me and Bob­by McK­ee,” Kristof­fer­son mis­heard the last name, assumed it was a man, and wrote the famous lyrics, inspired not by Bar­bara but by Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Stra­da, in which Antho­ny Quinn and Giuli­et­ta Masi­na trav­el togeth­er on a motor­cy­cle as a per­form­ing duo. (The Louisiana ref­er­ences come in because Kristof­fer­son was work­ing as a heli­copter pilot in the Gulf at the time.)

In La Stra­da, Quinn “got to the point where he couldn’t put up with [Masi­na] any­more and left her by the side of the road while she was sleep­ing,” says Kristof­fer­son. Lat­er, when he finds out she has died, he “goes to a bar and gets in a fight. He’s drunk and ends up howl­ing at the stars on the beach.” In a par­al­lel to this mourn­ful scene, Tom Brei­han at Stere­ogum describes how Kristof­fer­son, after hear­ing Joplin’s ver­sion of the song, “spent the rest of the day walk­ing around Los Ange­les, cry­ing. He prob­a­bly wasn’t alone. A lot of peo­ple prob­a­bly cried when they heard Joplin singing ‘Me and Bob­by McGee.’” A lot of peo­ple still do.

A long list of famous singers has cov­ered the song, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Roger Miller—just about any­one you might name in folk and coun­try. But Joplin “made it her own,” Kristof­fer­son says, and it’s no emp­ty cliché. Writ­ten as a coun­try song, Joplin doesn’t quite sing it that way, and she “doesn’t real­ly sing it as blues or psy­che­del­ic rock either,” writes Brei­han. “Instead, she just lets it rip, her phras­ing imme­di­ate and instinc­tive,” howl­ing at the stars like Antho­ny Quinn. “Joplin might’ve nev­er hitch­hiked across the coun­try with any­one named Bob­by McGee,” but she “did what great inter­preters do.” She made the song “about Janis Joplin, because that’s what Janis Joplin made it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Get Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

It takes a lot of swag­ger and con­fi­dence to play a cou­ple of barre chords on a gui­tar, look like the coolest cat doing so, and rev­o­lu­tion­ize rock music while doing so. That’s Link Wray we’re talk­ing about, and the song is the 1958 instru­men­tal hit “Rum­ble.” It still sounds fresh today for the same rea­sons it was con­tro­ver­sial at the time. It sounds sleazy, grungy, dirty. This is a song for a pool hall, or a bik­er bar, and just reeks of cig­a­rettes and liquor. And from Pulp Fic­tion onwards, the song has popped up in many movies and TV shows, giv­ing a scene a bit of cool dan­ger.

The above video is from a one-hour gig that Wray and his band per­formed at the Win­ter­land Ball­room in San Fran­cis­co, 1974, the for­mer ice skat­ing rink that pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham turned into one of the pri­mo music venues of its day. And Link Wray play­ing was like one of the gods of rock descend­ing to anoint the crowd. Presley–though Wray defend­ed him dur­ing his act–had dropped out of main­stream cul­ture. The orig­i­nal rock and rollers, Wray’s peers, were either dead or nos­tal­gia acts. So this appear­ance is mag­i­cal, rock spir­it made flesh, look­ing dan­ger­ous and sex­u­al in all his swag­ger.

That swag­ger was well earned. Fred Lin­coln Wray was born in North Car­oli­na to a Shawnee moth­er, as a Chero­kee and White father had returned from WWI with PTSD. In the most­ly Black neigh­bor­hood where he grew up, he would hide under­neath the bed when the Ku Klux Klan would come through on a ter­ror cam­paign. “Elvis, he grew up — I don’t want to sound racist when I say this — he grew up white man poor,” Wray said in an inter­view. “I was grow­ing up Shawnee poor.”

He suf­fered weak eye­sight and bad hear­ing from child­hood measles, and lat­er when he served time in the army, he’d con­tract tuber­cu­lo­sis, lose one lung, and was told he wouldn’t have a singing career.

But he did have his gui­tar skills, which he’d learned as a child from a trav­el­ing Black gui­tarist called Ham­bone. Back from the army he formed a group with his broth­ers Ver­non and Doug, and was going by the name Lucky. They gigged around Vir­ginia and Wash­ing­ton, DC, and were asked by a local pro­mot­er to come up with a song sim­i­lar to The Dia­monds’ “The Stroll.” What they came up with was an instru­men­tal called “Odd­ball.” It was a hit played live but when they went into a stu­dio to record a demo, it just didn’t have “that sound”. Wray start­ed punch­ing holes in his speak­ers with a pen­cil and in one stroke cre­at­ed the fuz­ztone gui­tar sound.

The big labels wouldn’t bite, but Cadence Records’ Milt Grant said yes. Or rather, his teenage step­daugh­ter and her friends said yes, and Milt put aside his own dis­taste. Juve­nile delin­quents were at once both a “prob­lem” and a way to sell prod­uct, espe­cial­ly with the hit musi­cal and movie West Side Sto­ry. “Rum­ble” was a much bet­ter name than “Odd­ball,” and, on March 31, 1958, it was released.

Some DJs refused to play the sin­gle in cities where teenage gang vio­lence was a prob­lem. When Wray and his band played Amer­i­can Band­stand, Dick Clark didn’t men­tion the title. It didn’t stop the sin­gle from being a hit.

And it was influ­en­tial. Wray pret­ty much invent­ed pow­er-chord riff­ing, and influ­enced Jimi Hen­drix, Jeff Beck, Neil Young, Jim­my Page, Pete Town­shend, and count­less oth­ers. Cur­mud­geon-genius Mark E. Smith of the Fall named him as one of the only two musi­cians he respect­ed (the oth­er was Iggy Pop).

Link Wray’s Chero­kee and Shawnee her­itage was not well known among the gen­er­al pub­lic, but the recent doc­u­men­tary Rum­ble: The Indi­ans Who Rocked the World brought the influ­ence of Native Amer­i­can musi­cians out into the open for cel­e­bra­tion, con­nect­ing Link Wray with Rob­bie Robert­son, Char­lie Pat­ton, Mil­dred Bai­ley, and Ste­vie Salas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

The Sto­ry of “Wipe Out,” the Clas­sic Surf Rock Instru­men­tal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

It’s fit­ting for the day, even though it was record­ed long ago (1990). The footage above fea­tures Pat­ti Smith and her depart­ed hus­band Fred “Son­ic” Smith per­form­ing a stripped-down, acoustic ver­sion of her clas­sic “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” A rare record­ing of Smith and Son­ic per­form­ing togeth­er, this is a lit­tle trea­sure. Savor the moment.

Peo­ple have the pow­er
The pow­er to dream, to rule
To wres­tle the world from fools
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
Lis­ten. I believe every­thing we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth­’s rev­o­lu­tion
We have the pow­er!

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Hear Pat­ti Smith’s First Poet­ry Read­ing, Accom­pa­nied by Her Long­time Gui­tarist Lenny Kaye (St. Mark’s Church, 1971)