Kris Kristofferson (1936–2024) wrote ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ with producer Fred Foster, who handed him the title — a Monument Records secretary named Bobbie McKee, whose surname Kristofferson misheard. He is the figure the song’s fame most obscures: not the famous singer, not the first to record it, but the writer whose words outlived both. He wrote a run of standards in the same period, including ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ and ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down’.