Star of Country Music and Movies Dies at 88
The esteemed singer-songwriter behind “Me and Bobby McGee” and dozens of other hits was also memorable on the big screen in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born.
Kris Kristofferson, the soulful country music superstar who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” performed with the supergroup The Highwaymen and made audiences swoon in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born, has died. He was 88.
Kristofferson died Saturday at home in Maui, Hawaii, his family announced. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” they said in a statement. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”
He threw away a career in the military and moved to Nashville, where he worked as a janitor at Columbia Records and watched as Bob Dylan recorded his seminal 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. It took Kristofferson many months before his music career finally took hold.
Kristofferson also performed “Help Me Make It Through the Night” on his 1970 self-titled album, but it was Sammi Smith’s version that became one of the most enduring singles in the annals of country music, vaulting as high as No. 8 on the Billboard chart.
Kristofferson said he wrote the song after reading a quote from Frank Sinatra, who, when asked what he believed in, replied, “Booze, broads or a bible … whatever helps me make it through the night.”
Kristofferson also wrote a morose song about a hangover, “Sunday Mornin‘ Comin‘ Down,” that was the Country Music Association’s song of the year in 1970 and a big hit for Ray Stevens and then Johnny Cash; “The Taker,” notably recorded by Waylon Jennings; “For the Good Times,” made popular by Ray Price and named song of the year by the Academy of Country Music in ’71; and “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” which Ronnie Milsap made his own.
In 1985, Kristofferson, singing and strumming his trusty Gibson guitar, teamed with buddies Cash, Jennings and Willie Nelson to form The Highwaymen, and the four “outlaws” released three albums through 1995 and thrilled live audiences before Jennings and Cash succumbed to poor health.
The charismatic Kristofferson was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985, entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He received an Academy Award nomination for best score in 1985 for Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter, in which he starred as singer Blackie Buck opposite Nelson in the Nashville-set tale.
He starred as love interests for Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), for Sarah Miles in The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea (1976) and — as alcoholic, has-been singer John Norman Howard — for Barbra Streisand in the remake of A Star Is Born (1976).
Kristofferson graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1958 from Pomona, where he majored in creative literature, participated in football, rugby and boxing and was sports editor of the college paper.
This unlikely combination of brains and brawn helped him win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University’s Merton College, and he became a disciple of American poet William Blake. Yet despite such esoteric exploration, he never abandoned his lifelong admiration for the down-home poetry of his idol, Hank Williams.
On track to become a major and offered a position to teach English literature at West Point in 1965, Kristofferson took a two-week leave and headed to Nashville (he arrived while still in uniform). He then resigned from the Army.
While trying to break into the business, Kristofferson flew commercial helicopters and worked as a janitor at Columbia and on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, where he penned “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” The first song that he wrote that was recorded was “Vietnam Blues,” by Dave Dudley in 1966.
As a janitor, Kristofferson had been trying to get Cash to listen to his work, but to no avail. So, in 1969, Kristofferson landed his National Guard helicopter on Cash’s property outside Nashville and emerged with demo tapes for the singer.
The brash move paid off. Later that year, Cash brought Kristofferson onstage with him at the Newport Folk Festival and would feature him on his ABC variety show. “It started a whole performing career I just didn’t anticipate,” he said. “I was tickled to death that people were just starting to cut my songs.”
Kristofferson starred as a down-on-his-luck musician who deals marijuana in the 1972 film Cisco Pike (the soundtrack included songs from his second album, The Silver-Tongued Devil and I), and Peckinpah made him a movie star a year later when he cast him as William H. Bonney in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. (Kristofferson helped get Dylan a role in the movie.)
“I was scared to death and stupid and slow and Marty was bright and fast and articulate and compassionate and intense, and it was wonderful,” he said. “And then on Taxi Driver, you had Robert De Niro giving Cybill Shepherd one of my albums and quoting my songs; she said my name like I was Bob Dylan or something.”
Kristofferson won a Golden Globe for his work in A Star Is Born opposite Streisand, whom he had once dated. (That caused a bit of friction with Streisand’s then-boyfriend, Jon Peters, a producer on the film.) The movie grossed $80 million ($442 million in today’s dollars), second only to Rocky that year, and spawned a successful soundtrack.
Kristofferson also played wide receiver Marvin “Shake” Tiller and Burt Reynolds‘ buddy in Semi-Tough (1977) and was Abraham Whistler, the mentor of Wesley Snipes’ character, in Blade (1998) and its 2002 sequel.
Kristofferson was married to Francis Beer, his high-school girlfriend, from 1961-69; to Coolidge from 1973-80; and to attorney Lisa Meyers since 1983. She survives him, as do his children, Tracy, Kris Jr., Casey, Jesse, Jody, John, Kelly and Blake; and his seven grandchildren.
“I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life,” he said. “Somehow I just slipped into it and it’s worked. It’s not up to me — or you. I feel very lucky that life’s lasted so long because I’ve done so many things that could have knocked me out of it. But somehow, I just always have the feeling that He knows what He’s doing.”