Country star Kris Kristofferson is dead

Singer-songwriter dies at 88
Country star Kris Kristofferson is dead

Instead of studying literature, Kris Kristofferson becomes a janitor at a record label. With this he begins a unique career as a songwriter, country star and actor. The poet has now died at the age of 88, surrounded by his family.

The US country singer Kris Kristofferson, who became one of the most influential American singer-songwriters of his time with works such as “Me and Bobby McGee” and was also a successful actor, is dead. He died on Saturday at the age of 88 , his family said. Kristofferson had suffered from memory loss since he was 70. A family spokesman said Kristofferson died peacefully at his home in Maui, Hawaii, surrounded by his family. A cause of death was not given.

Kristofferson was an exceptional talent – an athlete with the sensitivity of a poet, a former army officer and helicopter pilot, a Rhodes Scholar who took a job as a janitor in what turned out to be a brilliant career move. He first established himself in the music world as a songwriter in the country music capital of Nashville, writing hits like the Grammy-winning “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and the No. 1 hit ” Me and Bobby McGee” by his former girlfriend Janis Joplin. He appeared on stage alongside Bob Dylan and won three Grammys: for best country song and for two duets with Rita Coolidge, to whom he was married from 1973 to 80. Kristofferson is one of the most important songwriters of all time. His songs have been sung by music legends such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin and Ray Charles.

In the early 1970s, the artist with the booming, unpolished baritone also became a celebrated film star. He starred with Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore” (1974). In 1977, he won a Golden Globe Award alongside Barbra Streisand for playing a dissolute rock star in “A Star is Born.” In Sam Peckinpah's 1973 western “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” he played the role of the notorious outlaw alongside James Coburn.

Janitor at Columbia Records

Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, on June 22, 1936, the grandson of Swedish immigrants, and moved frequently because his father was a general in the Air Force. After graduating from Pomona College in California, where he played football and rugby, Kristofferson attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and then followed the family tradition by joining the Army. He attended the Army's elite Ranger School, learned to fly helicopters and achieved the rank of captain.

In 1965, Kristofferson was offered a position as an English teacher at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York – he was fascinated by the works of poet William Blake – but he turned it down to go to Nashville. Kristofferson became a janitor at the Columbia Records studio because it gave him the chance to pitch his songs to the big stars who were recording there. He also worked as a helicopter pilot, transporting workers between Louisiana's oil fields and offshore drilling rigs.

During this time, Kristofferson wrote some of his most memorable songs, including “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” which he said he wrote on an oil rig. His boldest song idea came when he landed his helicopter on Johnny Cash's lawn – although he disputed Cash's version that he climbed out of the cockpit with a tape in one hand and a beer in the other. Cash later had a No. 1 hit with Kristofferson's dirge “Sunday Morning Comin' Down.”

Song line by Leonard Cohen as an epitaph

Three years after divorcing his second wife Rita Coolidge, Kristofferson married lawyer Lisa Meyers in 1983, with whom he lived in Hawaii until the end. Together they had five children and foster children. “He can't be managed,” his wife once said of him. “Even when someone tells him to have a good day, he responds, 'Don't tell me what to do'.”

Until recently, Kristofferson always began his concerts with the song “Shipwrecked in the 80's”. Out of superstition. The song was supposed to bring him luck. The fact that he toured as a singer with his songs and filled halls probably surprised him the most. “Every artist who has sung my songs has done it better than me,” Kristofferson once said. “I sing like a frog.” The New York Times took a similar view: “Mr. Kristofferson never got past three chords.”

Nevertheless, the fans loved him, for whom the singing poet embodied the broken attitude to life of the Vietnam generation with his social criticism and melancholy. Kristofferson had prepared for his farewell and chose a line from Leonard Cohen's song for his gravestone: “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.”