Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter and actor, dies at 88

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rugged charisma who became a country music superstar and Hollywood A-list actor, has died.

Christopherson died Saturday at her home in Maui, Hawaii, family spokeswoman Abby McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Christopherson died peacefully surrounded by his family. No reason given.

In the late 1960s, Brownsville, Texas wrote such country and rock 'n' roll 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 himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, with Ray Price's “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin's “Me and Bobby McGee” out.

Acted opposite him Ellen Burstyn Director Martin Scorsese's 1974 film “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976's “A Star Is Born,” and in 1998 starred opposite Wesley Snipes in Marvel's “Blade.”

Christopherson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove complex folk lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his Bob Dylan-influenced long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs, he represented a new breed of country songwriters, along with peers such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall

“There is no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at the 2009 BMI Awards ceremony for Kristofferson. “Everything he writes is an ideal and we all have to live up to it.”

Christopherson has retired Since performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage, including a performance with Cash's daughter Roseanne Nelson's 90th Birthday Celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. The two sang “Loving Her Was Easy (I'm Easier Than Anything),” a song that was a hit for Kristofferson and a longtime live staple for Nelson, another great interpreter of her work.

Nelson and Kristofferson would join forces with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings to form the country supergroup “The Highwaymen” from the mid-1980s.

Christopherson was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and college football player; Graduated with an MA in English from Merton College, University of Oxford, England; and flew helicopters as a captain in the US Army but turned down an appointment to teach at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, to write songs in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records' Music Row studios in 1966 while Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

At times, Kristofferson's legend was larger than real life. Kristofferson liked to tell an exaggerated story of Cash landing a helicopter on Cash's lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down” with a beer in one hand. In interviews over the years, Kristofferson has said, with all due respect to Cash, that when he landed 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 must have been holding a beer. Helicopters can't fly.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he wouldn't have had a career without cash.

“When I was at Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry shaking his hand was the moment I decided I was going to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He took me under his wing before I ever cut a song. He cut my first record which was record of the year. He put me on stage first.

One of her most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee”, was written at the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. A song Foster had in mind was titled “Me and Bobby McKee”, named after a female secretary in his building. Christopherson said in an interview in “Performing Songwriter” magazine that he was inspired to write the song about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film “La Strada”.

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut his version days before he died of a drug overdose in 1970. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Kristofferson's recorded hits include “Look Closer Now,” “Desperado's Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I Wanna 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.

The formation of Highwayman with Nelson, Cash and Jennings was another important point in his career as a performer.

“I think I was different from the other guys in that I came into it as a fan of all of them,” Kristofferson told the AP in 2005. “I still had respect for them when I was in the army. They were like my main heroes when I got to Nashville because they were people who took music seriously. Not only to be recorded by them but to be friends with them and work alongside them is a little surreal. It was like seeing your face on Mount Rushmore.”

The group released only three albums between 1985 and 1995. Jennings died in 2002 and Cash died a year later. Kristofferson said in 2005 that there had been some talk of reforming the group with other artists such as George Jones or Hank Williams Jr., but Kristofferson said it would not have been the same.

“When I look back now — I know I heard Willie say it was the best time of his life,” Kristofferson said in 2005. “For me, I wish I'd been more aware of how short time is. It's been years, but it's still like a blink of an eye. I wish I'd cherished every moment.”

Of the four, only Nelson is now alive.

Kristofferson's sharp-tongued political lyrics sometimes hurt his popularity, especially in the late 1980s. His 1989 album, “Third World Warrior,” focused on Central America and U.S. policy there, but critics and fans weren't thrilled with the overtly political lyrics.

He said that during an interview with the AP in 1995 he remembered a woman complaining about a song that began with killing children in the name of freedom.

“And I said, 'Well, what made you mad — me saying this or us doing this? To me, they were getting mad at me because I was telling them what was going on.'

As the son of an Air Force general, he enlisted in the Army in the 1960s because it was expected of him.

“I was in ROTC in college, and it was accepted in my family that I would do my service,” he said in a 2006 AP interview. “From my background and the generation I came from, honor and serving your country was just taken for granted. So, later, when you came to question some of the things that were done in your name, it was especially painful.”

Hollywood may have saved his music career. He still received exposure through his film and television appearances even when he was unable to tour with a full band.

Kristofferson's first role was in 1971 in Dennis Hopper's “The Last Movie”.

He had a fondness for westerns, and used his voice to play attractive, stoic leading men. He was Burstyn's ruggedly handsome love interest in a rocky relationship with Streisand in “A Star Is Born,” a role echoed by Bradley Cooper in the 2018 remake.

He was a truck driver for the same director in director Sam Peckinpah's 1973 “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”, 1978's “Convoy” and a corrupt sheriff in director John Sayles' 1996, “Lone Star”. He also starred in one of Hollywood's biggest financial flops, “Heaven's Gate,” a 1980 Western that ran millions of dollars over budget.

And in a rare appearance in a superhero movie, he played mentor to Snipes' vampire hunter in “Blade.”

He described in a 2006 AP interview how he got his first acting gig while performing in Los Angeles.

“It just so happened that my first professional gig was opening for Linda Rondstadt at the Troubadour in LA,” Christopherson said. “Robert Hilburn (Los Angeles Times music critic) wrote a fantastic review and the concert was held for a week,” Christopherson said. “A bunch of film people came there and I started getting film offers without any experience. Of course, I had no acting experience.”

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Hall reports from Nashville. AP National Writer Hillel Italy contributed to this report.

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This story has been updated to correct Rosanne Cash's spelling.