RIP Kris Kristofferson

 

Kris Kristofferson, who attained success as both a groundbreaking country music singer-songwriter and a Hollywood film and TV star, died on September 28th at home in Maui, Hawaii. Born Kristoffer Kristian Kristofferson in Brownsville, Texas on June 22, 1936. Kristofferson was a Renaissance man – an athlete with a poet’s sensibilities, 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. Kris first established himself in the music world as a songwriter in the country music capital of Nashville – writing hits such as the Grammy-winning “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times,” and one-time girlfriend Janis Joplin’s plaintive No. 1 hit, “Me and Bobby McGee.” In the early 1970s he became well-known as a performer with a rumbling, unpolished baritone, as well as an in-demand actor, notably opposite Barbra Streisand in “A Star Is Born,” one of the most popular films of 1976. Kristofferson’s rugged good looks led to roles in movies such as “Cisco Pike,” “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,” “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea,” “Convoy,” “Heaven’s Gate,” “Lone Star” and “Blade.”. Kristofferson appeared in one Spaghetti western as Jesse Ray Torrance in the 1999 made for TV film “Outlaw Justice” written by Gene Quintano and co-starring Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Sancho Gracia which was filmed in Almeria, Spain. Kris also appeared in two European documentary western films as himself in “Go West Young Man” in 2003 and as narrator in “Requiem for Billy the Kid” in 2006.