Los Angeles
AP
—

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.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville native wrote classics such 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 became known primarily through being sung by others, be it Ray Price singing “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

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

Kristofferson, who could recite 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.”

As an actor, he starred alongside 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, 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, New York, to pursue songwriting to dedicate 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 tracks for the groundbreaking double album Blonde on Blonde.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story about how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn, beer in hand, to give him a cassette of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” 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 that no one had really cut it yet, 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 backstage at the Grand Ole Opry when I was still in the Army was the moment I decided to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut 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 recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written at the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in mind called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in Performing Songwriter magazine that after watching the Frederico Fellini film “La Strada,” he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and a woman traveling together.

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),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” and “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, only occasionally appearing on stage as a guest.