Career
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Helicopter pilot for United States Army, 1960-65. Songwriter,
singer, and composer, 1965-; actor, 1970-. Signed with Monument
Records, 1969. Author of numerous songs, including "Me and Bobby
McGee," "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," "Help Me Make It Through the
Night," "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again),"
"For the Good Times," and "Why Me, Lord?" Has worked as a solo
performer, a duet performer with former wife, Rita Coolidge, and
part of an ensemble with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie
Nelson.
Actor in feature films, including Cisco Pike, 1971, Alice Doesn't
Live Here Anymore, 1975, A Star Is Born, 1976, The Sailor Who Fell
from Grace with the Sea, 1976, Semi-Tough, 1977, Heaven's Gate,
1980, Trouble in Mind, 1986, and Amerika, 1987.
Awards: Song of the year citation from Country Music Association,
1970, for "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down"; Grammy Award nominations for
best song, both 1971, for "Help Me Make It through the Night" and
"Me and Bobby McGee"; Grammy Award nominations for best country
song, 1971, for "For the Good Times," and 1973, for "Why Me, Lord?";
Grammy Award for best vocal performance by a duo (with Rita
Coolidge), 1973; Grammy Awards for songwriting, 1973, for "From the
Bottle to the Bottom," and 1975, for "Lover Please." Honorary
doctorate awarded by Pomona College, 1974.
Kris Kristofferson's success in movies and on television tends to
obscure his considerable accomplishments as a songwriter and vocal
performer. In fact, the lanky Texas native established his career by
writing and singing country music; his mournful lyrics and
deceptively simple melodies helped to define the "progressive"
Nashville sound in the late 1960s. Esquire contributor Tom Burke
notes that Kristofferson is "one of the most respected, and his work
among the most often performed, of contemporary songwriters. He is
highly paid not only for the writing of songs but for the singing of
them." In Best of the Music Makers, George T. Simon calls
Kristofferson "a balladeer of the dispossessed, the troubadour of
losing and losers," who has brought "a gentle intensity to his
portraits of frustration, defeat, and lost romance."
Kristofferson emerged in Nashville at the time when performers such
as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson were beginning to
challenge the clean-cut, all-American image expected of country
performers. It is no surprise that the scruffy, hard-living
Kristofferson forged close friendships with these stars and has
since performed with them on stage and on television. Indeed,
Kristofferson's songs--many of them celebrations of drifting in the
wrong direction--have established him as one of country music's
"outlaws." TV Guide correspondent Neil Hickey finds the artist a
leading member of "a new breed of Nashville songwriters who [are]
more literary, more poetic, less insular in their approaches."
Kristofferson's "outlaw" image is a product of his adult years. As a
young man he was every American family's model son: a Golden Gloves
boxer who earned Phi Beta Kappa grades in college, winner of a
prestigious Atlantic Monthly collegiate short-story contest, and
recipient of the coveted Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University.
The son of a career major general in the U.S. Air Force,
Kristofferson seemed to be destined for the same sort of
conservative success. The golden youth had one Achilles heel,
however. He was passionately fond of country music, especially Hank
Williams, and he liked to sing folk songs and accompany himself on
guitar. While studying literature at Oxford he managed to sing and
tour as Kris Carson, even appearing on British television.
Never particularly fond of academic life, Kristofferson eventually
became disillusioned with Oxford. In 1960 he returned to the United
States and joined the army. For a time it appeared that he might
follow in his father's footsteps, as he moved through ranger school,
parachute-jump school, and pilot training, eventually becoming an
able helicopter pilot. When his first tour of duty ended he
reenlisted for another three years and was sent to Germany. There a
friend persuaded him to send a few songs to a Nashville agent. In
1965 Kristofferson was on the verge of accepting a teaching position
at West Point when he decided to move to Nashville instead. Against
the wishes of his parents and his wife, he embarked for the South
with little to sustain him but a handful of songs he had written.
The following four years became "a struggle just to stay alive and
write," according to Paul Hemphill in a New York Times Magazine
feature. Kristofferson's struggle was the classic sort--he tended
bar and even worked as the night janitor at a Columbia Records
studio in order to make ends meet while he peddled his songs to the
reigning country stars. Eventually two performers responded to
Kristofferson's talent and persistence--Johnny Cash and Roger
Miller. Miller was the first to record a Kristofferson song, the
winsome "Me and Bobby McGee." Cash accepted Kristofferson's "Sunday
Mornin' Comin' Down" and turned it into a Number 1 hit. No one was
more surprised than Kristofferson when the Country Music Association
named "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" the 1970 song of the year. In a
vision of country music's future, the long-haired Kristofferson
ambled to the stage and shyly accepted his prize.
By that time Cash and Kristofferson had become fast friends. Cash
persuaded Kristofferson to perform his own music, and the artist
signed with Monument Records. From the outset Kristofferson's music
had its roots squarely in folk and country, but he found fans in the
pop-rock arena as well. Even though every live concert became a
battle with stage fright, Kristofferson achieved great popularity.
He earned two gold singles on his own for "Silver Tongued Devil and
I" and "Why Me, Lord," and he watched with satisfaction as Janis
Joplin made "Me and Bobby McGee" into a major rock classic.
Hollywood discovered Kristofferson in the early 1970s, and he added
film appearances to his already-busy schedule of touring and
recording. In 1973 he married singer Rita Coolidge, and they
performed as a country-pop duo, earning a number of Grammy
nominations and awards together. Nevertheless, as Cheryl McCall
notes in a People magazine article, Kristofferson's "peculiar
insecurity led to near panic in the face of adulation and stardom."
Between 1973 and 1977 Kristofferson took roles in more than a
half-dozen feature films, some of which--particularly A Star Is
Born--became major embarrassments for him. Plagued with drug and
alcohol abuse, he divorced Coolidge and tried to set his life
straight. The process took almost five years.
Kristofferson told Roger Ebert: "Getting high was supposed to be a
method of opening the doors of perception for me, and what it was
doing was shutting them. ... It took me thirty years to admit I had
a problem." With his newfound sobriety, Kristofferson remarried and
gravitated back to country music, where he found his friends Cash,
Nelson, and Jennings undergoing similar dryouts. In 1987
Kristofferson released a new album, Repossessed, that earned
widespread praise. Once again he found himself in demand for live
performances, and he also made several well-received films,
including Amerika and Trouble In Mind. Hickey described the
resurgent Kristofferson as "a middle-aged gent who's dead serious
about his fathering, husbanding, songwriting, acting, record-making,
and concert-giving."
In 1990 Kristofferson teamed with Cash, Nelson, and Jennings for a
tour to promote the Highwayman II album. Kristofferson is indeed in
his element as a member of that foursome of road-weary troubadours.
His songs address familiar themes in country music--lost love,
loneliness, aimless wandering, and maverick lawlessness--but they do
so with a degree of sensitivity and sophistication one might expect
from a Rhodes Scholar who wanted to be a novelist. Like his fellow
"outlaws," Kristofferson has gained a measure of respect from his
well-publicized struggle for sobriety as well as for his artistic
integrity. The bashful singer told TV Guide that he now looks at
life "like an old alcoholic" who "is trying to take it one day at a
time."
Personal Information
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Full name Kristoffer Kristofferson; born June 22, 1936, in
Brownsville, Tex.; son of U.S. Air Force major general; married Fran
Beir, 1960 (divorced); married Rita Coolidge (a singer), August 19,
1973 (divorced, 1979); married Lisa Meyers (an attorney), February
18, 1983; children: (first marriage) Tracy, Kris; (second marriage)
Casey; (third marriage) two. Education: Pomona College, B.A., 1958;
attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, 1959.
Contemporary Musicians
November 1990 , Volume: 4
by Anne Janette Johnson