Kris Kristofferson, New York City, Nov. 8, 2011
Photo by Frank Beacham
Kris Kristofferson is 86 years old today.
A country music singer, songwriter, musician and film actor, Kristofferson is known for such hits as "Me and Bobby McGee," "For the Good Times," "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" and "Help Me Make It Through the Night."
Kristofferson is the sole writer of most of his songs, and he has collaborated with various other figures of the Nashville scene such as Shel Silverstein.
In 1985, Kristofferson joined fellow country artists Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash in forming the country music supergroup, "The Highwaymen."
Born in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson’s father, an Army officer, pushed his child towards a military career. Like most "military brats," Kristofferson moved around frequently as a youth, finally settling down in San Mateo, California, where he graduated from San Mateo High School.
An aspiring writer, Kristofferson enrolled in Pomona College in 1954. He experienced his first dose of fame when he appeared in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" for his achievements in collegiate rugby union, football and track and field. He and fellow classmates revived the Claremont Colleges Rugby Club in 1958, which has remained a Southern California rugby dynasty.
Kristofferson earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where his college was Merton. While at Oxford, he was awarded his Blue for boxing and began writing songs. With the help of his manager, Larry Parnes, he recorded for Top Rank Records under the name Kris Carson. Parnes was working to sell Kris 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 towards his goal of becoming a novelist. This early phase of his music career was unsuccessful.
In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a degree in English literature and married his long-time girlfriend, Fran Beer. Under pressure from his family, Kristofferson ultimately joined the U.S. Army and achieved the rank of Captain. He became a helicopter pilot after receiving flight training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He also completed Ranger School.
During the early 1960s, he was stationed in West Germany as a member of the 8th Infantry Division. It was during this time that he resumed his music career and formed a band. In 1965, when his tour of duty ended, Kristofferson was given an assignment to teach English Literature at West Point.
Instead, he decided to leave the Army and pursue songwriting. His family disowned him because of this decision and they never reconciled with him. They saw it as a rejection of everything they stood for, in spite of the fact that Kristofferson has said he is proud of his time in the military. He received the AVA (American Veterans Awards) "Veteran of the Year Award" in 2003.
Kristofferson has said that he was greatly influenced by the poet, William Blake, while at Oxford, who had proclaimed that if one has a God-given creative talent then one should use it or else reap sorrow and despair. He sent some of his compositions to a friend's relative, Marijohn Wilkin, a successful Nashville songwriter. But when he arrived in the town to see Sam Phillips of Sun Records, his shoes were, according to Philips, "falling off his feet."
After leaving the Army in 1965, Kristofferson moved to Nashville. He worked at a variety of odd jobs while struggling for success in music, burdened with medical expenses resulting from his son's defective esophagus. He and his wife soon divorced.
He got a job sweeping floors at Columbia Studios in Nashville. There he met Johnny Cash, who initially accepted some of Kristofferson's songs, but chose not to use them. During Kristofferson's janitorial stint for Columbia, Bob Dylan recorded his landmark 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde, at the studio. Although he had the opportunity to watch some of Dylan's recording sessions, Kristofferson never met Dylan out of fear that he would be fired for approaching him.
In 1966, Dave Dudley released a successful Kristofferson single, "Viet Nam Blues." Within the next few years, more Kristofferson originals hit the charts, performed by Roy Drusky ("Jody and the Kid"); Billy Walker & the Tennessee Walkers ("From the Bottle to the Bottom"); Ray Stevens ("Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down"); Jerry Lee Lewis ("Once More with Feeling"); Faron Young ("Your Time's Comin'"); and Roger Miller ("Me and Bobby McGee," "Best of all Possible Worlds" "Darby's Castle").
He achieved some success as a performer himself, following Johnny Cash's introduction of Kristofferson at the Newport Folk Festival. Kristofferson had previously grabbed Cash's attention when he landed his helicopter in Cash's yard without prior arrangement and gave him some tapes.
In 1971, Janis Joplin, who dated Kristofferson for some time until her death, had a #1 hit with "Me and Bobby McGee" from her posthumous album, Pearl. When released, it stayed at the top of the charts for weeks. Kristofferson released his second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I in 1971. The album was a success and established Kristofferson's career as a recording artist in his own right.
Soon after, Kristofferson made his acting debut in The Last Movie (directed by Dennis Hopper) and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival. In 1971, he acted in Cisco Pike and 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."
For the next few years, Kristofferson focused on acting. He appeared in Blume in Love (directed by Paul Mazursky) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (directed by Sam Peckinpah).
He continued acting, in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Convoy, (another Sam Peckinpah film which was released in 1978), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Vigilante Force, a film based on the Yukio Mishima novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and A Star Is Born (with Barbra Streisand), for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor (and which he noted had been an experience "worse than boot camp") and Flashpoint in 1984 (directed by William Tannen).
Also during this time, Kristofferson met singer Rita Coolidge. They married in 1973 and released an album, Full Moon, another success buoyed by numerous hit singles and Grammy nominations. More artists took his songs to the top of the charts, including Willie Nelson, whose 1979 LP release of Willie Nelson Sings Kris Kristofferson proved to be a smash success.
Nelson and Kristofferson continued their partnership, and added Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash to form the supergroup, The Highwaymen. Their first album, Highwayman was a huge success, and the supergroup continued working together for a time. The single from the album Highwayman, also titled "Highwayman," was awarded the ACM's single of the year in 1985.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted Kristofferson in 1985, as had the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977. In 2004, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2006, he received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and released his first album full of new material in 11 years: This Old Road.
On April 21, 2007, Kristofferson won CMT's Johnny Cash Visionary Award. Rosanne Cash, Cash's daughter, presented the honor during the awards show in Nashville. Previous recipients include Cash, Hank Williams, Jr., Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire and the Dixie Chicks.
"John was my hero before he was my friend, and anything with his name on it is really an honor in my eyes," Kristofferson said during an interview. "I was thinking back to when I first met him, and if I ever thought that I'd be getting an award with his name on it, it would have carried me through a lot of hard times."
Kristofferson has said that he would like the first three lines of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" on his tombstone:
Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Here, Kristofferson joins former wife, Rita Coolidge, to perform Kristofferson’s “Bobby McGee”