Singer-songwriter and actor Kris Kristofferson dies at 88

(AP) –– Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes Scholar with a deft writing style and rugged charisma who became a country music superstar and Hollywood actor, has died at age 88.

Kristofferson He died this Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, according to family spokesman Ebie McFarland in an email.

McFarland said Kristofferson passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family. The cause was not reported.

In the late ’60s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics 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, but many of his songs were better known for having been performed by others, whether it was Ray Price singing “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

He also acted alongside Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred alongside 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 with popular country music. With his long hair, bell-bottoms, and Bob Dylan-influenced counterculture songs, he represented a new generation of country music songwriters along with colleagues such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There is no better living songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 Kristofferson awards ceremony hosted by BMI. “Everything you write is a standard and we are all going to have to live with that.”

As an actor, he played the lead role alongside Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but he also had a penchant for westerns and cowboy dramas.

He was a boxer and football player in college, earned a master’s degree in English from Merton College, Oxford University, England, and turned down a teaching position at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966, when Dylan recorded tracks for the influential double album “Blonde on Blonde.”

Sometimes the legend of what Kristofferson was surpassed real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter in Cash’s yard to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. In interviews over the years, Kristofferson said with all due respect to Cash that while a helicopter landed at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song which no one really cut and you certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter with a beer in your hand.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“When I was still in the military, when I shook his hand backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, I decided I would come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electrifying. He took me under his wing before recording any of my songs. He recorded my first album, which was album of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”

One of his most played songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a title in mind for the song, “Me and Bobby McKee,” after a secretary who worked in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in Performing Songwriter magazine that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and a woman traveling together after watching Federico Fellini’s film, “La Strada.”

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and recorded her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous number one hit for Joplin.

Among the hits Kristofferson recorded were “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”

In 1973 he married composer Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful career as a duo that earned them two Grammy Awards, but they divorced in 1980.

He retired from performing and recording in 2021, and has since made only occasional guest appearances on stage.