Kristofferson's family confirmed his death on the evening of September 29, saying he "passed away peacefully" at his home on Saturday. "We are all so blessed for the time we spent with him," said the statement, signed by his wife Lisa, his eight children and seven grandchildren. "Thank you for loving him all these years and when you see a rainbow, know that he is smiling down on all of us."
Inspired by the emotional vulnerability and literary mastery of country songwriting, Kristofferson often topped the American country charts, and cover versions of his songs were hits for artists such as Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and Johnny Cash. In the mid-1970s he worked with famous film directors including Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah and won a Golden Globe for his work with Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born.
Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson attended high school in California and initially wanted to be a novelist, later studying literature at Pomona College in Southern California and at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Inspired by the emerging rock and roll scene, his first experience in music was in the UK as Chris Carson, although the songs he recorded were never released.
He continued to perform music during his service in the US Army, where he became a helicopter pilot, a skill he continued to pursue (in the oil industry and the National Guard) after leaving the Army in 1965. This clearly angered his military family. "I prided myself on being the best worker or the guy who could dig ditches the fastest," he later said. "Something inside of me made me want to do the hard things ... Part of it was I wanted to be a writer and I decided I needed to get out and live."
He moved to downtown country music in Nashville, where he worked as a bartender and as a janitor for Columbia Recording Studios. In the late 1960s he wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and country singers including Ray Stevens, Farren Young and Billy Walker, but his solo career failed.
The breakthrough came after he landed a National Guard helicopter at Johnny Cash's home and presented him with a tape of his songs, later describing the incident as "the kind of invasion of privacy I wouldn't recommend." Cash admired Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down, and his recording of Kristofferson's song topped the country chart in 1970 and won Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards.
That same year, Kristofferson recorded the first of 18 studio albums he would release during his career. He met briefly with Janis Joplin, who recorded his song Me and Bobby McGee, and it became a No. 1 hit after her death in 1970. Another Kristofferson song from the same year, Help Me Make It Through the Night, became a hit for Sammy Smith and was later performed as a cover by Elvis Presley, Gladys Knight, Mariah Carey and others.
By the time his fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn, topped the country chart in 1972, the strikingly handsome Kristofferson had launched an acting career, first appearing in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. Other notable films include the role of outlaw Billy the Kid in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and with Burt Reynolds in the sports comedy drama Half Hard (1977). "A Star Is Born" cemented his Hollywood success, marred by "The Gates of Heaven" (1980), a notorious box office flop. | BGNES
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