At the heart of Me and Bobby McGee is what June and I call the Great American Songbook-the classic songs that never die. My musical biography begins with that songbook. My father was a fabulous piano player who loved George Gershwin most of all, and who played the entire Gershwin repertoire (even Rhapsody in Blue). In the Rocketones, my high school dance band (I played alto sax), we featured not current hits but the timeless songs of the thirties and forties. On summer vacations, my family attended summer-stock musicals-"South Pacific," "My Fair Lady," "The Music Man." One year the local Lions Club brought to town half a dozen of the legendary Big Bands-Count Basie, Benny Goodman, the Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey bands. They trafficked in the same songs the Rocketones played, the crown jewels of swing music. I went to every show and was dazzled.

From the beginning I listened to popular music on the radio and continue to do so to this day. But thanks to my early encounters with the classics, I knew that the throwaway tunes on the hit parade bear about as much resemblance to George Gershwin and Cole Porter as toothpaste ads bear to Picasso. The masterpieces of song have depth, elegance, beauty, and meaning. Those qualities elevate them above the vast majority of popular songs. (Not all were written long ago. June and I include in our repertoire a number of contemporary tunes, songs like Janis Ian's "Some People's Lives" and several of Jesse Harris's compositions for Norah Jones.)

My life in music has provided me with a wealth of wonderful experiences-playing keyboards in such bands as the Brad Lund Trio, Moonlight Express, Lost at the Lake, and the Second Sunday Band; playing solo piano at such establishments as the Lodge at Pebble Beach and Gold Hill's Crown Point Restaurant; writing three musicals and hundreds of songs; performing one of those songs for Nobel Prize winner and former President Jimmy Carter. And now, Me and Bobby McGee, which affords me the pleasure and privilege of teaming with June to perform some of the greatest songs ever written.