Kris Kristofferson, country music icon and film star, has died at the age of 88

Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with deft writing and rugged charisma who became a country superstar and star Hollywood actor, has died.

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

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully surrounded by his family. No reason was given. He was 88.

From the late 1960s onwards, the Brownsville native wrote classic standards such as Sunday morning comes, Help me get through the night, For the good times And Me and Bobby McGee. Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs became known primarily because they were sung by others, such as Ray Price 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 anymorestarred alongside Barbra Streisand in 1976 A star is born and starred alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s blade in 1998.

Kristofferson, who could recite English poet William Blake by heart, wove intricate folk lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottoms and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new generation of country songwriters alongside colleagues like Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There is no better songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a BMI-hosted awards ceremony for Kristofferson in November 2009. “Everything he writes is a standard and we all have to live with that.”

A Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, he received a master’s degree in English from Merton College, Oxford University in England, and turned down a teaching position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY, to pursue songwriting to dedicate to 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 groundbreaking album Blonde on blonde Double album.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Johnny 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 shot Sunday morning comes with a beer in one hand.

Over the years, Kristofferson has said in interviews – with all due respect to Cash – that although he landed at Cash’s house in a helicopter, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song , which no one had ever recorded and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter with a beer.

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

“Shaking his hand while I was still in the Army, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, was the moment I decided to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electrifying. He kind of took me under his wing before he recorded one of my songs. He recorded my first record, which was record of the year. He brought me on stage for the first time.”

One of his most frequently recorded songs, Me and Bobby McGeewas written at the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in mind called Me and Bobby McKeenamed after a secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in Performing Songwriter magazine that after watching the Frederico Fellini film, he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and a woman on a journey together. La Strada.

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits Kristofferson recorded include: why me, Loving her was easier (than anything I’ll ever do), Take a closer look now, Desperados waiting for a train, A song I would 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, only occasionally appearing on stage as a guest.