He died peacefully and surrounded by his household at his dwelling in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, household spokeswoman Ebie McFarland mentioned.
No reason behind loss of life was given.
Beginning within the late Nineteen Sixties, the Texas native wrote such classics requirements as Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, Assist Me Make it By the Night time, For The Good Occasions and Me And Bobby McGee.
Kristofferson was a singer himself, however lots of his songs have been greatest often called carried out by others, whether or not Ray Value crooning For the Good Occasions or Janis Joplin belting out Me And Bobby McGee.
Kristofferson, who might recite William Blake from reminiscence, wove intricate folks music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into well-liked nation music. Along with his lengthy hair, bell-bottomed trousers and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a brand new breed of nation songwriters together with friends equivalent to Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T Corridor.
“There’s no higher songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson mentioned throughout a November 2009 award ceremony held by BMI. “Every thing he writes is an ordinary and we’re all simply going to must reside with that.”
As an actor, Kristofferson performed the main man reverse Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but additionally had a keenness for shoot-out westerns and cowboy dramas.
He acquired a Golden Globe Award for Finest Actor for 1976 romantic drama A Star Is Born.
He was a Golden Gloves boxer and American soccer participant in faculty, acquired a grasp’s diploma in English from Merton Faculty on the College of Oxford, and turned down an appointment to show on the US Army Academy at West Level, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
Hoping to interrupt into the business, he labored as a part-time janitor at Columbia Data’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal Blonde On Blonde double album.
At occasions, the legend of Kristofferson was bigger than actual life. Johnny Money favored to inform a principally exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former US Military pilot, landed a helicopter on Money’s garden to provide him a tape of Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down with a beer in a single hand.
Over time in interviews, Kristofferson mentioned he did land a helicopter at Money’s home, however the Man in Black was not at dwelling on the time, the demo tape was a track that nobody ever really lower, and he definitely couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.
In a 2006 interview with the Related Press, he mentioned he may not have had a profession with out Money.
“Shaking his hand after I was nonetheless within the Military backstage on the Grand Ole Opry was the second I’d determined I’d come again,” Kristofferson mentioned.
“It was electrical. He form of took me underneath his wing earlier than he lower any of my songs. He lower my first report that was report of the 12 months. He put me on stage the primary time.”
One in every of his most recorded songs, Me And Bobby McGee, was written based mostly on a advice from Monument Data founder Fred Foster. Foster had a track title in his head referred to as Me And Bobby McKee, named after a feminine secretary in his constructing.
Kristofferson mentioned in an interview within the journal Performing Songwriter that he was impressed to write down the lyrics a few man and girl on the highway collectively after watching the Frederico Fellini movie La Strada.
Joplin, who had a detailed relationship with Kristofferson, modified the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a person and lower her model days earlier than she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording turned a posthumous primary hit for Joplin.
Hits recorded by Kristofferson embody Why Me, Loving Her Was Simpler (Than Something I’ll Ever Do), Watch Intently Now, Desperados Ready For A Practice, A Music I’d Like To Sing and Jesus Was A Capricorn.
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and so they had a profitable duet profession that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.