Singer-songwriter, actor Kris Kristofferson dies at 88
Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson has died peacefully at his home in Hawaii at the age of 88. Photo: Getty
Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.
Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday (local time), family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.
McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause of death was given.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, Help Me Make It Through the Night, For the Good Times and Me and Bobby McGee.
Kristofferson was a singer, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning For The Good Times or Janis Joplin belting out Me And Bobby McGee.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music.
With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T Hall.
“Kris Kristofferson believed creativity is God-given, and those who ignore such a gift are doomed to unhappiness. He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and his work gave voice not only to his soul but to ours. He leaves a resounding legacy.”
—Kyle Young,… pic.twitter.com/JMyZp6lJUr— Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (@countrymusichof) September 29, 2024
“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI.
“Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”
As an actor, Kristofferson played the leading man opposite Barbra Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas.
He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England, and turned down an appointment to teach at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal Blonde On Blonde double album.
Kris Kristofferson.
What a life he led.
Good company.
Great man.
See you down the road old mate.— Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) September 30, 2024
At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life.
Johnny Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former US Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down with a beer in one hand.
Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut, and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.
In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.
“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said.
“It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”
The first time I saw Kris performing at the Troubadour club in L.A. I knew he was something special. Barefoot and strumming his guitar, he seemed like the perfect choice for a script I was developing, which eventually became A Star Is Born.
In the movie, Kris and I sang the… pic.twitter.com/WDdU2zoUwD
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) September 30, 2024
One of his most recorded songs, Me And Bobby McGee, was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster.
Foster had a song title in his head called Me And Bobby McKee, named after a female secretary in his building.
Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine Performing Songwriter that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Federico Fellini film La Strada.
Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose.
The recording became a posthumous No 1 hit for her.
Hits that Kristofferson recorded include Why Me, Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do), Watch Closely Now, Desperados Waiting For A Train, A Song I’d Like to Sing and Jesus Was A Capricorn.
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980, and he married Lisa Meyers in 1983.