Background and career
Kristoffer Kristofferson (June 22, 1936 – September 28, 2024) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was a pioneering figure in the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, moving away from the polished Nashville sound and toward a more raw, introspective style. Some of his most famous songs include "Me and Bobby McGee" (1970), "For the Good Times" (1968), "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" (1969), and "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (1970), which were also recorded by and became hits for other artists. Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas. The family relocated to San Mateo, California, during his childhood. He enlisted in military service during the early 1960s. After one single for Epic Records, Kristofferson was signed by Monument Records in 1969. Throughout his career, he recorded a total of 10 albums for Monument, two albums for Mercury Records, one album each for Justice Records and Atlantic Records, and two albums each for New West Records and KK Records. In 1971, Kristofferson made his film debut in The Last Movie and devoted much of the later decade to making Hollywood films. Some of his most famous films include his collaborations with director Sam Peckinpah on Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Convoy (1978), as well a minor role in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Other roles of his include Cisco Pike (1972), A Star Is Born (1976), Heaven's Gate (1980) and the Blade film trilogy (1998–2004) Kristofferson was also a member of the country music supergroup the Highwaymen between 1985 and 1995. He has charted 12 times on the American Billboard Hot Country Songs charts; his highest-peaking singles there are "Why Me" and "Highwayman", which reached number one in 1973 and 1985, respectively. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He was a three-time Grammy Award winner, out of 13 total nominations. Kristofferson died in 2024 at the age of 88, three years after announcing his retirement.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, the oldest of three children born to Mary Ann (née Ashbrook) and Henry Kristofferson, a United States Army Air Corps officer (later a major general in the United States Air Force). Henry later worked as a manager for Saudi Aramco after retiring from the Air Force. During Kristofferson's childhood, his father encouraged him to pursue a military career. Kristofferson moved around frequently as a youth because of his father's military service, and the family settled in San Mateo, California. He attended San Mateo High School, where he graduated in 1954. At age 17, Kristofferson took a summer job with a dredging contractor on Wake Island in the western Pacific Ocean. Kristofferson went to Pomona College in Claremont, California, as a literature major. He studied under Frederick Sontag, whom he considers an important influence in his life. His early writing included prize-winning essays that were published in The Atlantic. During this time, Kristofferson worked in various construction jobs and as a firefighter. He appeared in the March 31, 1958, issue of Sports Illustrated for his achievements in collegiate rugby union, American football, and track and field. He and his classmates also revived the Claremont Colleges Rugby Club, and it remains a Southern California rugby institution. Kristofferson graduated in 1958, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, in English Literature. He was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society his junior year. Also in 1958, Kristofferson was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, studying at Merton College. While performing his own songs there, Kristofferson signed with Larry Parnes, best known for his work with Tommy Steele. Parnes was working to sell Kristofferson as "a Yank at Oxford" to the British public; Kristofferson was willing to accept that promotional approach if it helped his singing career, which he hoped would enable him to progress toward his goal of becoming a novelist. In early 1959, Kristofferson signed a recording contract with Paul Lincoln's Top Rank label as "Kris Carson", but these recordings were unsuccessful. In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a B.Phil. in English literature. In 1961, he married his longtime girlfriend, Frances "Fran" Mavia Beer. Also in 1961, Kristofferson joined the United States Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He attended U.S. Army Ranger School and completed helicopter pilot training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He relocated Beer and their newborn daughter to West Germany, where he served as a member of the 8th Infantry Division. During this period, Kristofferson was promoted to the rank of captain and resumed his music career, forming a band to play at service clubs. It was at this point that he met Marijohn Wilkin, the aunt of his platoon commander. In 1965, after his tour in West Germany ended, Kristofferson was re-assigned to teach English literature at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
In June 1965, while on a two-week leave from his assignments, Kristofferson contacted Wilkin in Nashville, Tennessee, and decided to become a country music songwriter. He resigned from the Army and relocated his family to Nashville that year, exacerbating his relationship with his parents. Wilkin signed Kristofferson to her publishing house Buckhorn Music and pitched his song "Talkin' Vietnam Blues" to singer Dave Dudley. Concurrently, Kristofferson held various jobs including as a bartender, a construction worker, and a railroad worker. He later worked as a janitor for Columbia Records, which afforded him the possibility of talking directly with the artists and a presence during recording sessions. He released his debut single containing his songs "Golden Idol" and "Killing Time" in 1967 on Epic Records. After his second child was born with esophagus issues in 1968, Kristofferson worked at Petroleum Helicopters International (PHI) in Lafayette, Louisiana. While flying workers to and from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, he would often write new songs. At weekends, he returned to Nashville, and for the following week he would pitch the songs around town before returning to Louisiana. The trips exhausted Kristofferson; his children were living with Fran in California and he felt his career as a songwriter was failing. PHI also admonished him for his increased alcohol consumption. Upon returning to Nashville the same week, Kristofferson learned three of his songs had been recorded: "Jody and the Kid" by Roy Drusky, "Help Me Make It Through the Night" by Jerry Lee Lewis and "Me and Bobby McGee" by Roger Miller. Through June Carter, Kristofferson first attempted to pitch material to her husband Johnny Cash. Carter took the demos, which were eventually lost in a pile of other material Cash had received. At the time, Kristofferson worked on the weekends for the Tennessee National Guard. To attract Cash's attention, Kristofferson landed a helicopter on Cash's property. Cash eventually invited Kristofferson to a "guitar pull" party in his house. Cash was impressed and invited Kristofferson to perform with him at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival. Unsatisfied by Buckhorn Music, Kristofferson decided to change labels. Monument Records director Bob Beckham invited Kristofferson to play songs for him and label owner Fred Foster. Kristofferson performed "To Beat the Devil", "Jody and the Kid", "The Best of All Possible Worlds" and "Duvalier's Dream"; Foster was impressed and signed Kristofferson to Monument as a recording artist and Combine Music as a songwriter. The ten-year contract required Kristofferson to submit ten records containing songs he had written. Kristofferson was surprised he had been signed as a singer; he told Foster at the time: "I can't sing, I sound like a frog!" Kristofferson later said Buckhorn Music had not allowed him to record demos of his compositions. In 1969, Kristofferson divorced Beer and left Nashville to join the production of his first motion picture, Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, in Peru. In his absence, Cash continued promoting Kristofferson's original songs with other singers. Upon returning to Nashville, Kristofferson learned of his new popularity and started to work on his debut album for Monument, Kristofferson. As his manager and producer, Foster had decided to keep some of Kristofferson's original material from being passed to other artists. The new material, as well as his songs that had already been recorded by other artists, were included in the recording sessions, which were held at Monument Recording Studio. Monument released Kristofferson in June 1970. Kristofferson wrote or co-wrote every song on the album. He collaborated with Marijohn's son, John Buck Wilkin, on "Blame it on the Stones". Though Kristofferson was not a commercial success, it received positive reviews from critics. According to Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, the album "is able to combine lyric sophistication with country music's traditional interest in everyday problems". The commercial success of "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" led to the first of several industry awards nominations for the singer. Johnny Cash's rendition of the single earned Kristofferson his first Country Music Association award for Song of the Year that November. Also in 1970, he made his debut performance as a singer at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour. Fred Roos, the casting director of Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, invited him to audition for his film debut for a leading role on Two-Lane Blacktop. Kristofferson, who was signed to Columbia Records, arrived to the appointment intoxicated and left. Kristofferson was next offered Bill L. Norton's script for Cisco Pike by Columbia. His peers encouraged him to reject the role and to take acting lessons instead, but he accepted the part, and later said; "I read the script and I could identify with this cat" and that acting is "understanding a character, and then being just as honest as you can possibly be". Kristofferson began an 18-month tour, during which he suffered a bout of walking pneumonia, which was worsened by his alcohol consumption. While performing, he would not face the audience and mumbled the words to his songs. Eventually, he was hospitalized. During the tour, Kristofferson performed on The Johnny Cash Show. While in California, Kristofferson befriended singer Janis Joplin. Upon returning to Nashville in early 1971, he received with his mail at Combine Music Joplin's posthumous album Pearl, which at the time was still unreleased. Joplin's album included a cover of his original composition "Me and Bobby McGee". The following morning, he returned to the studio and recorded his second Monument album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, which was released that July. He wrote nine of the album's 10 songs, including the single "Lovin' Her Was Easier (than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)". He collaborated with songwriter Shel Silverstein on "The Taker" and keyboardist Donnie Fritts on "Epitaph (Black and Blue)". Also included on the album was a cover of Bobby Bare's "Good Christian Soldier". "Lovin' Her Was Easier (than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" reached number 46 on Billboard Hot 100 and number 4 on Adult Contemporary. These songs would later be used on the soundtrack for Cisco Pike, which was released on January 14, 1972.
That February, Monument released his third album Border Lord. The album was all-new material and sales were sluggish. He also swept the Grammy Awards that year with numerous songs nominated, winning country song of the year for "Help Me Make It Through the Night". Kristofferson's fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn, initially had slow sales, but the third single, "Why Me", was a success and significantly increased album sales. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA on November 8, 1973. Kristofferson appeared with Rita Coolidge on the BBC television series The Old Grey Whistle Test, performing "Help Me Make It Through the Night". Al Green later released his version of "For the Good Times" on the album I'm Still in Love with You.
In April 1973, Kristofferson received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Pomona College during Alumni Weekend, accompanied by Cash and Coolidge. Four months later, Kristofferson married Coolidge. The duo released an album titled Full Moon, another success buoyed by numerous hit singles and Grammy nominations. His fifth album, Spooky Lady's Sideshow, released in 1974, was a commercial failure. Artists such as Ronnie Milsap, Willie Nelson and Johnny Duncan continued to record Kristofferson's material with success, but his rough vocal style and anti-pop sound kept his own audience to a minimum. In March 1979, Kristofferson participated in the Havana Jam festival in Havana alongside several notable American and Cuban artists. His performance is captured on Ernesto Juan Castellanos's documentary Havana Jam '79. That November, Kristofferson and Coolidge appeared on The Muppet Show, where Kristofferson sang "Help Me Make It Through the Night" with Miss Piggy, Coolidge sang "We're All Alone" with forest animals, and the pair sang "Song I'd Like to Sing" with the Muppet monsters. They divorced in 1980. In 1982, Kristofferson joined Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Brenda Lee on The Winning Hand, a double album consisting of remastered and updated performances of recordings the four artists had made for the Monument label during the mid-1960s; the album reached the top ten on the U.S. country album charts. He married again, to Lisa Meyers, and concentrated on films for a time, appearing in the 1984 releases The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, Flashpoint, and Songwriter. Nelson and Kristofferson both appeared in Songwriter, and Kristofferson was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The album Music from Songwriter, featuring Nelson-Kristofferson duets, was a country success.
For the next several years, Kristofferson focused on acting. He appeared in Cisco Pike (1972) with Gene Hackman; Blume in Love (1973), directed by Paul Mazursky; three Sam Peckinpah films: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), and Convoy (1978); and Michael Ritchie's Semi-Tough (1977) with Burt Reynolds. He continued acting in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Vigilante Force (1976), The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976), and the romantic drama A Star Is Born (1976) with Barbra Streisand, for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. At the peak of his box office power, Kristofferson turned down William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) and the romantic war film Hanover Street (1979). Despite his success with Streisand, Kristofferson's solo musical career headed downward with his non-charting ninth album, Shake Hands with the Devil. His next film, the two-part 1979 NBC-TV movie Freedom Road, did not get good ratings. Kristofferson was next cast in the lead role as the enigmatic Sheriff James Averill in Michael Cimino's bleak and sprawling 1980 anti-Western Heaven's Gate. Despite being a scandalous studio-bankrupting and industry-changing failure at the time (it cost Kristofferson his Hollywood A-list status), the film gained critical recognition in subsequent years. In 1981, he co-starred with Jane Fonda in Rollover, directed by Alan J. Pakula. In 1986, he starred in The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James with Johnny Cash and Flashpoint with Treat Williams in 1984, directed by William Tannen. This was followed, in 1985, by the neo-noir thriller Trouble In Mind co-starring Keith Carradine and Lori Singer. In 1987, Kristofferson starred in the seven-episode TV series Amerika with Robert Urich and Christine Lahti. In 1989, he was the male lead in the film Millennium with Cheryl Ladd.
