Bobbie married a man named Robert McKee and, in her late 20s, took a job far from home, in Hendersonville, just outside of Nashville. A friend had introduced her to Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, the husband-and-wife songwriting team who supplied the Everly Brothers and others with smashes, including “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” Boudleaux happened to be in need of a secretary. He’d give Barbara lyrics to type up after he and Felice emerged from their office, songs in hand after a spree of productivity.
While Boudleaux owned the building, most of it was occupied by his friend Fred Foster. Foster, co-founder of Monument Records, made his mark on both rock ’n’ roll and country by signing Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Roy Orbison, for whom he produced “Running Scared” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” He was an iconoclast willing to take a chance on people. In 1968, he was working on the Bryant-written album Polynesian Suite with steel-guitar whiz Jerry Byrd. As a money-saving measure, Foster recalled, he and Byrd decided to record with an orchestra in Mexico, rather than in Nashville. This required sorting through international rules and union laws, which meant Foster was constantly walking the 50 feet to Boudleaux’s office. He noticed the new secretary. “She was,” he said, “a very attractive young lady.”
Boudleaux clocked Foster’s interest in Bobbie, and that his friend wasn’t daunted by the secretary’s marital status. “I don’t think you’re coming to see me,” he ribbed Foster. “I think you’re coming to see Bobbie.” The producer, a bit smitten, thought of a novel way to demonstrate his affection. What he did next, he’d recount, in some form or another, for decades.
Among those to whom Foster would tell the story was me, in 2014, because I had hoped to find Barbara McKee and write about her for the New Yorker. “I ran up the steps, and by the time I got to my office, the whole idea had come to me,” said Foster, then in his early 80s. (He died in 2019.) The idea was to call Kris Kristofferson, who was top of mind because he’d been complaining of a dry spell. Indeed, Kristofferson was estranged from his family due to myriad failures, including as a songwriter. Would he consider writing something called “Me and Bobbie McKee”?
There’s something rather glorious about a song inspired by a mundane, unrequited workplace crush (or so it would have been seen as, at the time) being so beautiful. It seems, even now, like a fluke, with Foster giving Kristofferson only a title and no further guidance.