Kris Kristofferson, a singer-songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii on Saturday. He was 88.
His death was announced by Ebie McFarland, a spokesperson, who did not give a cause.
Hundreds of artists have recorded Kristofferson’s songs — among them Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Bublé and Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Kristofferson’s breakthrough as a songwriter came with “For the Good Times,” a bittersweet ballad that topped the country chart and reached the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. His “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit for his friend and mentor Johnny Cash later that year.
Cash memorably intoned the song’s indelible opening couplet:
Well, I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert.
Expressing more than just the malaise of someone suffering from a hangover, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” gives voice to feelings of spiritual abandonment that border on the absolute. “Nothing short of dying” is the way the chorus describes the desolation that the song’s protagonist is experiencing.
Steeped in a neo-romantic sensibility that owed as much to John Keats as to the Beat Generation and Bob Dylan, Kristofferson’s work explored themes of freedom and commitment, alienation and desire, darkness and light.
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose/Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free,” he wrote in “Me and Bobby McGee.” Janis Joplin, with whom Kristofferson was briefly involved romantically, had a posthumous No. 1 single with her plaintive recording of the song in 1971.
Later that year “Help Me Make It Through the Night” became a No. 1 country and Top 10 pop hit in a heart-stopping performance by Sammi Smith. The composition won Kristofferson a Grammy Award for Country Song of the Year in 1972.
Kristofferson’s own raspy, at times pitch-indifferent vocals never quite gained traction with commercial radio. One notable exception was the gospel-suffused “Why Me,” a No. 1 country and Top 40 pop hit released on the Monument label in 1973. (Another gospel song of his, “One Day at a Time,” written with Marijohn Wilkin, was a No. 1 country single for singer Christy Lane in 1980.)
Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, who were married for much of the ’70s, won Grammy Awards for best country vocal performance by a duo or group with “From the Bottle to the Bottom” (1973) and “Lover Please” (1975). They also appeared in movies together, including Sam Peckinpah’s gritty 1973 western, “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,” in which Kristofferson played the outlaw Billy the Kid. Peckinpah cast Kristofferson in the film after seeing him perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and in “Cisco Pike” (1972), his big-screen debut.
Martin Scorsese then cast Kristofferson, whose rugged good looks lent themselves to the big screen, as the laconic male lead, alongside Ellen Burstyn, in the critically acclaimed 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” He later starred opposite Barbra Streisand in Frank Pierson’s 1976 remake of “A Star Is Born,” a performance for which he won a Golden Globe Award.
Over four decades Kristofferson acted in more than 50 movies, among them the 1980 box-office failure “Heaven’s Gate” and John Sayles’ Oscar-nominated 1996 neo-western “Lone Star.” Singer-songwriters may not be the likeliest of movie stars, but Kristofferson consistently revealed a magnetism and command onscreen that made him an exception to the rule.
Kristofferson’s last major hit as a recording artist was “The Highwayman,” a No. 1 country single in 1985 by the Highwaymen, an outlaw-country supergroup that also included his longtime friends Waylon Jennings, Nelson and Cash.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas, the eldest of three children of Mary Ann (Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson.
Kristofferson is survived by Lisa (Meyers) Kristofferson, his wife of over 40 years, their sons, Jesse, Jody, Johnny and Blake, and a daughter, Kelly Marie; a son, Kris, and daughter, Tracy, from his marriage to Beer; and a daughter, Casey, from his marriage to Coolidge; and seven grandchildren.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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