Kris Kristofferson, Country Singer, Songwriter and Actor, Dies at 88
Kris Kristofferson, Country Singer, Songwriter and Actor, Dies at 88
He composed songs for hundreds of other artists, such as "Me and Bobby McGee" for Janis Joplin, and "Sunday Morning Coming Down" for Johnny Cash, before a second film.
Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter, whose poetic but simple-spoken songs infused country music with seldom seen candor and profundity and later enjoyed an equally successful career in the film industry, died in his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.
The death was confirmed through Ebie McFarland, the spokesperson who did not provide an explanation for the cause.
Many musicians are recorded Mr. Kristofferson's music and include Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Buble and Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Mr. Kristofferson's first breakthrough as a songwriter was achieved through "For the Good Times," an uplifting ballad with a bittersweet melody which topped the charts for country and made it to the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. The song's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" was the No. 1 country song for his mentor and friend Johnny Cash later that year.
Mr. Cash memorably intoned the tune's enduring opening couplet.
Well I woke up early on a Sunday morning.
Without a way to secure my head in a way that did not harm me
The beer I had for breakfast wasn't terrible either.
So I decided to have one more to eat for dessert.
It goes beyond the ache of someone who has a hangover "Sunday Morning Coming Down" expresses feelings of spiritual detachment that go beyond the absolute. "Nothing short of dying" is how lyrics describe the desperation that the protagonist of the song is feeling.
With a neo-Romantic style that was as influenced by John Keats as to the Beat Generation and Bob Dylan Mr. Kristofferson's works focused on themes of love and freedom as well as desire and alienation dark and light.
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose/Nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free," Kristofferson composed in "Me and Bobby McGee." Janis Joplin and Mr. Kristofferson was briefly involved romantically, recorded an untimely No. 1 single in the country with her simple version of the track in 1971.
In the following year "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was made the number. one country hit song and Top 10 pop hit in an unforgettable rendition of Sammi Smith. The track earned Mr. Kristofferson a Grammy Award for Country Song of the Year in 1972.
It was an exciting period to work as a writer in Nashville in the city in which Mr. Kristofferson fell in with an impressive group of like-minded and to bacchanalian tunesmiths who were as determined to be successful like he was. Roger Miller and Willie Nelson among them.
"We took it seriously enough to think that our work was important, to think that what we were creating would mean something in the big picture," Mr. Kristofferson said in an interview with the magazine No Depression in 2006.
"Looking back on it, I feel like it was kind of our Paris in the '20s," He continued, referring to American writers from abroad such as Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein who were residents of Paris in the 1920s. "Real creative and real exciting -- and intense."
Mr. Kristofferson's raspy and sometimes pitch-indifferent voice did not quite gain traction on commercial radio. A notable exception was the gospel-infused "Why Me," a no. 1. country single as well as a Top 40 pop hit released on the Monument label in 1973. (Another gospel track by his, "One Day at a Time," composed by Marijohn Wilkin, became an No. 1 single in the country for artist Christy Lane in 1980.)
Mr. Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge together throughout the 1970s and '80s, were awarded Grammy Awards for best country vocal performance by an ensemble or duo by performing "From the Bottle to the Bottom" (1973) as well as "Lover Please" (1975). They also starred in films together, such as Sam Peckinpah's dark 1973 western "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," in which Mr. Kristofferson played the outlaw Billy the Kid. Peckinpah portrayed Mr. Kristofferson as Billy the Kid after watching his performance on stage at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and in "Cisco Pike" (1972), his big screen debut.Martin Scorsese then starred Mr. Kristofferson who's tough good looks brought him for the screen as the elegant male lead, along with Ellen Burstyn, in the critically well-reviewed film "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." He then was in the role of Barbra Streisand on Frank Pierson's adaptation from "A Star Is Born," an appearance for which he was awarded an award called the Golden Globe Award.
Over the course of four decades, over the span of four decades, Mr. Kristofferson acted in more than 50 films, among those was the box-office flop of 1980 "Heaven's Gate" and John Sayles' Oscar-nominated neowestern "Lone Star." Singer-songwriters aren't the most popular of film stars but Kristofferson was a standout. Kristofferson consistently revealed onscreen an innate charisma and command that allowed him to stand out to the standard. In 2006, he was voted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame together with Matthew McConaughey, Cybill Shepherd and JoBeth Williams.
Mr. Kristofferson's final major record-maker hit has been "The Highwayman," a No. one country single in the year 1985 from the Highwaymen the outlaw-country supergroup which included his long-time pals Waylon Jennings as well as Cash, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Cash.
Cash. Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash, played an important part in the development of Mr. Kristofferson's emergence as a musician by inviting him perform alongside them during Newport Folk Festival. Newport Folk Festival in 1969.
He was. Kristofferson was still a scruffy songwriter in the early days, having worked as a janitor in Columbia Studios located in Nashville where he later remembered emptying ashtrays as well as wastepaper containers in the 1966 session of the recording of Mr. Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde." Afraid of the stage in Newport the night before the singer. Kristofferson might have forfeited his chance had not been for the support by the actress Ms. Carter Cash, who was, as her husband recounted in interviews, almost carried him onto stage along with them.The event was successful and exposed his. Kristofferson to a national audience following his extremely favorable mention on The New York Times the following day.
"If there was one thing that got my performing career started, that was it right there," Mr. Kristofferson said, reflecting on his experience, which was cited in the book from 2013 "Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville," written by Michael Streissguth.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born June 22nd, 1936 at Brownsville, Texas, the third child from Mary Ann (Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson. His father, who was a senior general of the Air Force, strongly urged Kristofferson to pursue a military career.
The family moved to the west. In 1954, the late Mr. Kristofferson graduated from San Mateo High School in Northern California in which he distinguished his academics as well as athletics. The school featured him in the form of a boxer who was promising on the Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" series in the year 1958.
He. Kristofferson graduated with honors with the degree of literature at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. In 1958, he graduated with honors from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. He also received a prize in a contest for short stories at the college level that was sponsored by The Atlantic magazine before being given an Rhodes scholarship to pursue a degree in English writing at Oxford.
In the public domain, under the name Kris Carson, he made an unsuccessful effort to be a pop superstar in the meantime, working with Tony Hatch, the British businessman who was famous for his work with pop singer Petula Clark.
He. Kristofferson graduated from Merton College, Oxford, in 1960. He was commissioned in the rank of second lieutenant within the U.S. Army. In 1961, he got married to Frances Beer and was stationed in Germany in which he worked as a pilot for a helicopter.
He was promoted to captain in 1965, and was offered an invitation to instruct English in the school of West Point. He resigned and traded the conveniences it could have brought for the soaring costs of living as a songwriter who was aspiring to Nashville.
His wife may have been horrified with the decision His parents were horrified. After a time, they scolded the man for throwing away all that which he worked so hard to attain.
"Not many cats I knew bailed out like I did," Mr. Kristofferson said, talking about this turbulent period when the couple divorced in 1970, and featured in a article published in The Times Magazine. "When I broke up, I wasn't aware of how I had shocked my family and friends who thought they knew that I was going to become an author. They thought that a writer was just a guy dressed in tweeds who smoked pipes. Then I left and didn't get a call from them for a long time.
"I wouldn't want to go through it again," he said, "but it's part of what I am."
The success in Nashville initially was not a reality for the late Mr. Kristofferson, and not without reasons. As per Mrs. Wilkin, the first publisher to sign him up to an agreement to write songs was several things to learn -- and learn -before he came to the distinct combination of vernacular and sophisticated expressions that would become his standard in the trade.
"He had been a poet and an English teacher, so his songs were too long and too perfect," Ms. Wilkin said in a 2003 interview with Nashville Scene. "His grammar was perfect. He needed to master how people speak."
Mr. Kristofferson's evolution as a song writer was more than simply mixing colloquialisms such as "ain't" and "nothin'" into his songs. He also developed a musical sensibility, a relaxed expression that was not akin to the basic Hank Williams-inspired songs he was composing when he first came to Nashville.
"I had to get better," Mr. Kristofferson said in an interview with Nashville Scene, reflecting on the troughs of his life before his breakthrough as an writer. "I was spending every second I could hanging out and writing and bouncing off the heads of other writers."
Also, he changed his publisher and left the publisher Ms. Wilkin's Buckhorn Music for Combine Music that was owned by the producer Fred Foster, who also included the free-spirited likes of Shel Silverstein as well as Mickey Newbury under contract.
In the year 1970, Mr. Foster issued, through his own record label Monument, "Kristofferson," Mr. Kristofferson's first album as an artist. The album featured versions of a number of songs that had become popular with other artists, such as "Me and Bobby McGee," for which Mr. Foster was credited as co-writer. (That song was first performed by Roger Miller, who had the Top 20 country hit with the song in 1969.)
He was a great singer. Kristofferson released other albums to mixed reviews in the 1970s. By the end of the decade, his work in films began to rival his fame as a singer-songwriter.
The 1980s and 1990s were when his work took on an active direction with lyrics that advocated human rights and justice for all. "What About Me," an album track from album from 1986, "Repossessed," spoke about the right-wing military's repressive policies throughout Central America.
The bypass surgery performed in 1999 slowed his. Kristofferson down, as did a prolonged bout of Lyme disease during the decade following however he continued to be active throughout his 80s.
He. Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2004, he was already admitted as a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1977) and also the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1985). He also was awarded the lifetime achievement award during the 2014 Grammy Awards.
The deceased Mr. Kristofferson is survived by Lisa (Meyers) Kristofferson, his wife of more than 40 years, their children, Jesse, Jody, Johnny and Blake and one daughter Kelly Marie; a son, Kris, and daughter, Tracy, from his union with Mrs. Beer; and a daughter, Casey, from his union with Mrs. Coolidge; and seven grandchildren.
A man with extraordinary talents and appetites The man known as the Mr. Kristofferson struggled early on with the best path to take in the many options readily available. in the music "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33," the singer did not seem to admit it as he depicts a conflicted character similar to himself who was able to take "every wrong direction on his lonely way back home."
Even with all this self-deprecation the fact that the Mr. Kristofferson believed that songwriting was definitely an indication of a "wrong direction" in the opinions of his family at the very least and was the method by which he discovered his calling in life and through which he gained notoriety and acclaim for his work.
"I wouldn't be doing any of it if it weren't for writing," said he stated, looking back at his professional career in an interview with the magazine online Country Standard Time.
"I never would have been able to record music had I not written. I would not have had the chance to perform without it. Also, I wouldn't have been asked to play in a film if I weren't an author."
"Writer" was the occupation mentioned on Mr. Kristofferson's passport.
No comments