Singer and actor Kris Kristofferson dies aged 88

American country music superstar and Hollywood actor Kris Kristofferson has died aged 88 at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday.

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music.

No cause was given.

Dolly Parton led the tributes, describing his death as a “great loss” and said: “I will always love you.” 

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards 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 were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning ‘For the Good Times’ or Janis Joplin belting out ‘Me and Bobby McGee’.

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 in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage.

He was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college; received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England; and flew helicopters as a captain in the US Army but turned down an appointment to teach at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.

Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Bob Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal ‘Blonde on Blonde’ double album. 

The formation of the Highwaymen, with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, was a pivotal point in his career as a performer.

“I think I was different from the other guys in that I came in it as a fan of all of them,” Kristofferson told the AP in 2005. “I had a respect for them when I was still in the Army. When I went to Nashville they were like major heroes of mine because they were people who took the music seriously. To be not only recorded by them but to be friends with them and to work side by side was just a little unreal. It was like seeing your face on Mount Rushmore.”

The group put out just three albums between 1985 and 1995. Jennings died in 2002 and Cash died a year later. Kristofferson said in 2005 that there was some talk about reforming the group with other artists, such as George Jones or Hank Williams Jr., but Kristofferson said it wouldn’t have been the same.

“When I look back now — I know I hear Willie say it was the best time of his life,” Kristofferson said in 2005. “For me, I wish I was more aware how short of a time it would be. It was several years, but it was still like the blink of an eye. I wish I would have cherished each moment.” 

Among the four, only Nelson is now alive.

Kristofferson’s sharp-tongued political lyrics sometimes hurt his popularity, especially in the late 1980s. His 1989 album, ‘Third World Warrior’ was focused on Central America and what United States policy had wrought there, but critics and fans weren’t excited about the overtly political songs. 

Kristofferson also had a career on the big screen and starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 A Star Is Born – in a role Bradley Cooper would later play in the 2018 remake.

His first role was in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, in 1971. He had a fondness for Westerns, and would use his gravelly voice to play attractive, stoic leading men.

He was the young title outlaw in director Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, a truck driver for the same director in 1978’s Convoy, and a corrupt sheriff in director John Sayles’ 1996 film Lone Star. He also starred in one of Hollywood biggest financial flops, Heaven’s Gate, a 1980 Western that ran tens of millions of dollars over budget. 

In a rare appearance in a superhero movie, he played the mentor of Wesley Snipes’ vampire hunter in Blade in the 1998 film.  

In 1973, Kristofferson married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge who he had a successful duet career, earning two Grammy Awards. They divorced in 1980.

The singer is survived by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren.