Kris Kristofferson, the actor, musician, and long-haired activist who represented postwar America’s countercultural ethos, died Saturday at his Maui, Hawaii, home, according to a spokesperson.
He was 88.
Spokesman Ebie McFarland released a family statement, “It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 28 at home.” “We’re all quite grateful for our time with him.” Thank you for loving him all these years. You should know that when you see a rainbow, he is looking down on us all.”
The reason for death was not known.
According to his biography, Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, played high school football in San Mateo, California, and attended Pomona College in eastern Los Angeles County before moving to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
After his return, he joined the Army and reportedly flew helicopters. A superior approached him to teach English at West Point, but he chose to pursue songwriting instead.
At the height of the nation’s baby boom, he released his song. Inspired by Hank Williams and Bob Dylan’s genre-bending, which made country and folk popular, he relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, and worked as a janitor at a recording studio to catch a sound wave from performers who recorded there, including Dylan and Johnny Cash.
The proximity helped, and by the 1970s, Kristofferson was a well-known musician in Nashville. In 1970, the Country Music Association selected Cash’s song “Sunday Mornin’, Comin’ Down” as song of the year, according to his biography.
According to his biography, Kristofferson released his debut album, “Kristofferson,” which included such notable songs as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “To Beat the Devil,” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” despite his belief that he sang like a “frog.”
Kristofferson, like his mentors, broke down barriers with the self-titled record, which resonated well beyond Tennessee. Janis Joplin, the queen of hippie soul, included “Me and Bobby McGee” among her hallmark tunes.
According to Kristofferson’s official bio, Dylan stated, “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”
Sammi Smith sang “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” which earned him his first Grammy Award for composition in 1971. In 1973, his duet with Rita Coolidge, “From the Bottle to the Bottom,” won the Grammy Award for Best Country Singing by a duet or group, and they repeated the feat with “Lover, Please” in 1975.
It was also the era when Hollywood beckoned, and Kristofferson transformed into an iconic figure. His hair, wisdom, and romanticism were widely recognized across the nation in the blockbuster remake “A Star Is Born,” where he portrayed an established music icon alongside an emerging star, played by Barbra Streisand.
In 1977, he won the Golden Globe for best actor performance for the movie that had been released the previous year.
In the 1980s, Johnny returned to music by forming the supergroup the Highwaymen with Cash and Waylon Jennings.
According to his biography, Kristofferson drank excessively and suffered from despair following his 1970s accomplishments.
Kristofferson’s activism was evident in his music, and in the 2000s and 2010s, his sounds and lyrical themes seemed to resurface among music enthusiasts.
He collaborated with renowned producer Don Was, who helped Kristofferson make a succession of critically praised albums and receive a Grammy nomination for best Americana album.
“I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas,” he told Esquire magazine in 2006. “I have argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the United Farm Workers. I have been a radical for a long time. I suppose it’s too terrible. I would be a more marketable right-wing redneck. But I started this to speak the truth as I saw it.”
Kristofferson received the Woody Guthrie Prize in 2016 from the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was founded to celebrate the legacy of the namesake folk legend. The center’s website states that the yearly award aims to recognize “outstanding contributions to music and activism.”
Two years later, IMDb reports that another remake of “A Star Is Born” grossed more than $436 million worldwide. Bradley Cooper played Kristofferson, while Lady Gaga represented Barbra Streisand.
That year, Kristofferson’s verified Facebook page stated that Cooper joined him onstage for some Hollywood magic while filming was ongoing.
“Two years ago at the Glastonbury Festival, Bradley Cooper borrowed Kris’s audience to film a concert scene for the new A Star Is Born,” according to the report. “Bradley and Gaga have taken over the role of Barbra and Kris.”
Kristofferson received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Requested to deliver a tribute, country singer Rodney Crowell shared the moment he discovered this wonderfully disruptive musician.
“News reached my small corner of the world that there was this helicopter-piloting, William Blake-quoting Rhodes scholar by the name of Kris Kristofferson, whose songs were transforming the country and popular music airwaves,” Crowell claimed, according to the Grammy Awards.
“By introducing intelligence, humor, emotional eloquence, spiritual longing, male vulnerability, and a devilish sensuality—i.e., a form of eroticism—to country music, Kris Kristofferson… did as much to expand the mainstream accessibility of an all-too-often misunderstood art form as Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles…,” he told reporters.
Crowell continued: “And, lest we forget, the man is one hell of an accomplished actor.”
His wife Lisa, children Tracy, Kris Jr., Casey, Jesse, Jody, John, Kelly, and Blake, as well as seven grandchildren, survive Kristofferson.