Music giant Kris Kristofferson, one of the great songwriters and show-business figures, has died.According to a statement from his family, Kristofferson died peacefully at home in Maui, surrounded by family.
No particular cause of death has been reported.Kristofferson was 88.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, where his father was serving in the Army Air Corps.(Later, Kristofferson’s father became an Air Force major general.) He grew up largely in San Mateo, California, and he was a college athlete in football, rugby, and track and field.
While studying at Pomona College, Kristofferson appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and had two essays published in the Atlantic.He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and that’s where he started writing songs.
After college, Kristofferson joined the Army and served as a helicopter pilot in West Germany, and he worked his way up to captain.After his tour of duty was complete, Kristofferson was offered a job teaching English at West Point, but he instead left the military to pursue a songwriting career.
Kristofferson moved to Nashville and worked a series of menial jobs while trying to break through as a songwriter.Eventually, he found work as a helicopter pilot, and there’s a famous story about him impressing Johnny Cash by landing a helicopter on Cash’s lawn.
Kristofferson started to gain some traction as a songwriter in the mid-’60s, and he released a few unsuccessful records of his own in the late ’60s.Ray Stevens recorded a version of Kristofferson’s utterly perfect hangover song “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” in 1969, but the song really took off when Cash recorded it a year later.
The song became a country chart-topper, and Kristofferson won the CMA Award for Songwriter Of The Year.In 1970, Kris Kristofferson signed to Monument Records as an artist and released his debut album Kristofferson.
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