Kris Kristofferson Dead At 88
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Music giant Kris Kristofferson, one of the great songwriters and show-business figures, has died. According to a statement from his family, Kristofferson died peacefully at home in Maui, surrounded by family. No particular cause of death has been reported. Kristofferson was 88.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, where his father was serving in the Army Air Corps. (Later, Kristofferson’s father became an Air Force major general.) He grew up largely in San Mateo, California, and he was a college athlete in football, rugby, and track and field. While studying at Pomona College, Kristofferson appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and had two essays published in the Atlantic. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and that’s where he started writing songs. After college, Kristofferson joined the Army and served as a helicopter pilot in West Germany, and he worked his way up to captain. After his tour of duty was complete, Kristofferson was offered a job teaching English at West Point, but he instead left the military to pursue a songwriting career.
Kristofferson moved to Nashville and worked a series of menial jobs while trying to break through as a songwriter. Eventually, he found work as a helicopter pilot, and there’s a famous story about him impressing Johnny Cash by landing a helicopter on Cash’s lawn. Kristofferson started to gain some traction as a songwriter in the mid-’60s, and he released a few unsuccessful records of his own in the late ’60s. Ray Stevens recorded a version of Kristofferson’s utterly perfect hangover song “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” in 1969, but the song really took off when Cash recorded it a year later. The song became a country chart-topper, and Kristofferson won the CMA Award for Songwriter Of The Year.
In 1970, Kris Kristofferson signed to Monument Records as an artist and released his debut album Kristofferson. That same year, Sammi Smith had a major crossover hit with a version of Kristofferson’s song “Help Me Make It Through The Night.” Around that time, Kristofferson also met and briefly dated Janis Joplin, and she recorded his song “Me And Bobby McGee,” which country star Roger Miller had already released. Joplin recorded the song three days before she died, and it became a posthumous #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. That same year, Kristofferson also made his acting debut in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie. Through the ’70s, Kristofferson kept writing successful songs for himself and others. His “Why Me” became a #1 country hit, and he and then-wife Rita Coolidge recorded the popular 1973 duet album Full Moon. But he probably became better-known as a movie star than as a musician.
In the ’70s, Kris Kristofferson starred in three different Sam Peckinpah films: Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, and Convoy. He also acted in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, won a Golden Globe opposite Barbra Streisand in the major hit A Star Is Born, and played the lead in the notorious boondoggle Western Heaven’s Gate. His movie career kept going into the 21st century, and he had great turns in John Sayles’ Lone Star and in the first two Blade movies. Kristofferson’s tough-but-sensitive romantic masculinity came through clearly in his music, and it really translated to the screen.
In 1979, Willie Nelson recorded an album of Kris Kristofferson’s songs. A few years later, Nelson and Kristofferson released a collaborative album of older songs with Dolly Parton and Brenda Lee. In 1984, Nelson and Kristofferson starred in the movie Songwriter together, and their soundtrack got an Oscar nomination. In 1985, Kristofferson and Nelson formed the outlaw-country supergroup the Highwaymen with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Kristofferson was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1985. Kristofferson kept touring and recording into the final years of his life, and his final LP The Cedar Creek Sessions came out in 2016. He retired in 2021, but he came back to play Willie Nelson’s 90th-birthday celebration last year. He had a hell of a life. Check out some of his work below.
RIP Kris Kristofferson pic.twitter.com/N9hRtS7IQ8
— Irish Unity (@IrishUnity) September 29, 2024
