Los Angeles
AP
—

Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and raw charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died Saturday at his home in Maui, Hawaii, family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

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

Beginning in the late 1960s, 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 himself, but many of his songs were best known because they were performed by others, whether it was Ray Price singing “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

He also starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’, starred opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976’s ‘A Star Is Born’ and co-starred with Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s ‘Blade’ in 1998.

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

“There’s no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at an awards ceremony for Kristofferson in November 2009, held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we all have to live with that.”

As an actor, he starred opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a penchant for shoot-out westerns and cowboy dramas.

He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, earned a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England, and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to practice 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 songs for the groundbreaking double album “Blonde on Blonde.”

Sometimes Kristofferson’s legend was bigger than real life. Cash liked to tell a largely exaggerated story about how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in his hand. Over the years, Kristofferson said in interviews with all due respect to Cash that even though 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 had ever actually cut and he certainly could don’t fly a helicopter with a beer in hand.

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

“Shaking his hand when I was backstage with the Army at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I decided I was going to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He took me under his wing a little bit before he cut one of my songs. He made my first record, which was record of the year. He put me on stage for the first time.”

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

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and scrapped her version just days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. The recording became a posthumous number 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits Kristofferson has recorded include ‘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 fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.

In 2021, he retired from performing and recording and only made occasional guest appearances on stage.