LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rugged charisma who became a rustic superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.
Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.
McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully surrounded by his family. No reason was given. He was 88.
Starting within the late Sixties, the Brownsville native wrote classics akin to “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but a lot of his songs became known primarily through being sung by others, be it Ray Price singing “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”
He also played a supporting role Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's 1974 film “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976's “A Star Is Born,” and starred opposite Wesley Snipes in Marvel's “Blade” in 1998.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake by heart, wove intricate folk lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottoms and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a brand new generation of country songwriters alongside colleagues like Willie Nelson. John Prine and Tom T. Hall.
“There is no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a BMI-hosted awards ceremony for Kristofferson in November 2009. “Everything he writes is a standard, and we all have to live with that.”
He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master's degree in English from Merton College, Oxford University in England, and turned down a teaching position on the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting to dedicate in Nashville. Hoping to interrupt into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records' Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the groundbreaking double album Blonde on Blonde.
At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Johnny Cash liked to inform a largely exaggerated story about how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash's lawn, beer in hand, to provide him a cassette of “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down.” Over the years, Kristofferson has said in interviews, with all due respect to Cash, that although he landed at Cash's house in a helicopter, the Man in Black wasn't even home on the time, the demo tape was a song that nobody had really cut it yet, and He definitely couldn't fly a helicopter with a beer.
In an interview with The Associated Press in 2006, he said that without Cash he may not have had a profession.
“Shaking his hand backstage at the Grand Ole Opry when I was still in the Army was the moment I decided to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before cutting one of my songs. He recorded my first record, which was record of the year. He brought me on stage for the first time.”
One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written on the advice of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in mind called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a secretary in his constructing. Kristofferson said in an interview in Performing Songwriter magazine that after watching the Frederico Fellini film “La Strada,” he was inspired to put in writing the lyrics a couple of man and a girl traveling together.
Joplin, who had a detailed relationship with Kristofferson, modified the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a person and cut her version just days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they’d a successful duet profession that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.
In 2021, he retired from performing and recording, only occasionally appearing on stage as a guest.
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