Discover three songs that mention Baton Rouge | Food & Entertainment

In Baton Rouge, one song sums up the city to a degree that it rarely needs naming. It’s the one people shout in unison, the one that rumbles stadiums and registers on seismographs. It’s mandatory for wedding receptions, tailgates and moments when the city wants to hear itself reflected back.

“Callin’ Baton Rouge” is woven into the city’s identity. It is shorthand for home, whether you live in the Capital City or not.

But Baton Rouge shows up in other songs, too — not as loudly, not as proud. In those lyrics, the city is an opening line, a passing reference, a place someone is headed or leaving behind.

Busted flat

Was Kris Kristofferson really busted flat in Baton Rouge to inspire the first line of “Me and Bobby McGee”?

Kristofferson wrote the song in 1969 at the suggestion of Monument Records producer Fred Foster. The two, therefore, shared writing credit. The song was first recorded that same year by country-pop singer Roger Miller of “King of the Road” fame.

Then, Janis Joplin did her take on the song in 1971, and it’s her voice that most people hear at any mention of that first line.

But, as Kristofferson told “American Songwriter” magazine in 2021, the line doesn’t exactly refer to a specific place within the city but to a journey in between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Kristofferson, who had trained as a helicopter pilot in the military, said he wrote the song while working in the Gulf of Mexico.

Earlier, after he completed a tour of duty in Germany, the Army offered him a job teaching at West Point. Kristofferson, the son of a U.S. Air Force general, turned it down to pursue a career in songwriting. 

He told the magazine: “At the time I was flying around Baton Rouge. That is probably why Baton Rouge and New Orleans were in it. But it was an idea that Fred Foster had given to me. He called up one time when I was about to go back down to the Gulf for another week of flying and he said, ‘I got a song title for you: Me and Bobby McGee.’”

Kristofferson said the idea of a “writing on assignment” gave him writer’s block at first.

“But then the idea just started growing in my head,” the late singer-songwriter said. “And I can remember when the last line came to me. I was driving to the airport in New Orleans, and the windshield wipers were going into the line about the ‘windshield wipers slappin’ time, I’s holdin’ Bobby’s hand in mine…’ And it finished the song for me.” 

— Robin Miller, features writer

Belmont Avenue

Born and raised in Lake Charles, Lucinda Williams released “Bus to Baton Rouge” in her 2001 album “Essence,” a release packed with slow, sentimental tracks detailing past and present romances.

In “Bus to Baton Rouge,” she sings of memories of a house on Belmont Avenue, which is a residential street running a little over half a mile from City-Brooks Community Park.

She wrote that the house was “built up on cinder blocks off of the ground,” the “driveway was covered with tiny white seashells,” “honeysuckle grew all around” and “a fig tree stood in the backyard.” 

She describes what she remembers of the house’s interior with an air of bittersweet sorrow. She wrote, “There are other things I remember, as well. But to tell them would be just too hard.”

In just under 6 minutes, Williams’ ballad to a house in Baton Rouge carries conflicting emotions many would think of a long-ago breakup you can’t shake off. The slow rhythm, carried by an upright bass, ties with Williams’ soft, country vocals, forging a poignant tribute that punches straight to the heart.

In July 2009, Williams sang the song live at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, England, and gave some context behind the song before performing it.

“I wrote this about, kind of a glimpse of part of my childhood growing up in Louisiana, describing my grandmother’s house there,” she said. “My mother’s mother.”

It’s unclear what the address is or if the house is still standing. But next time you’re driving along Belmont Avenue and see honeysuckle growing by a fig tree, just know that the vicinity played a role in stirring a Louisiana girl’s journey into stardom.

— Maddie Scott, features writer

A not-so lonely night

Mick Jagger may have spent a lonely night in spring of 1975 in Montauk, New York, at the “Memory Motel,” but the June 1, 1975, Baton Rouge night that the song references was crowded by any standards. 

Del Moon, who was at the concert that night, remembers that the then-LSU Assembly Center, now Pete Maravich Assembly Center, was the largest events facility between Houston and Atlanta in 1975.

The night was the kickoff for the Rolling Stones’ Tour of the Americas. They were the biggest name in rock ‘n’ roll. The opening night at the Center was meant to have two separate shows. 

But, the notoriously late band did what they did well in 1975 — they were late getting started, put on a great show and just never stopped playing. When it came time for the second show to start, the crowd waiting outside literally took some of the doors off the hinges to get inside, according to Moon. 

In his book, “The Greatest Shows on Earth,” the late Bill Bankhead, who ran the PMAC back in 1975, wrote that “both shows were sellouts with ‘festival seating,'” and “the real fun began when the band decided not to break between the two shows and continued playing even after the second show was to have begun.”

Moon, who now lives near Tampa, Florida, estimates that around 30,000 people were crowded into the PMAC that night.

Even so, Baton Rouge barely registers in “Memory Motel.”

Midway through the 7-minute song, Jagger sings, “I got to fly today on down to Baton Rouge. My nerves are shot already. The road ain’t all that smooth.”

It’s a passing line, easy to miss, delivered without emphasis.

Baton Rouge isn’t the point of the song. It isn’t even the destination. It’s a mile marker.

Released in 1976 after long months on the road, “Memory Motel” is a departure from the Stones’ earlier bravado. It’s a song that sounds tired in a way only fame can make a person. It’s about drifting, distance and loving something you can’t quite hold on to anymore.

The reference to Baton Rouge almost feels disorienting — like hearing your name spoken softly in a crowded room. It’s there. You’re sure of it. But the song doesn’t pause to explain.

And maybe that’s the point.

Not every place in a great song is meant to be held up to the light. Some exist briefly, then slip back into the blur of the road — remembered not because they were named loudly, but because they were part of the journey.

— Jan Risher, Louisiana culture editor

Baton Rouge may be best known for the song people shout together, but these other mentions paint a fuller picture.

Sometimes the city isn’t the chorus.

Sometimes it’s the first line, the memory, the mile marker — there for those paying attention.