The singer-songwriter died peacefully at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, a family spokesperson said.
Kris Kristofferson, the country music legend and A Star Is Born actor, has died at the age of 88.
The singer-songwriter died peacefully at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said.
The cause of death was not disclosed, but the musician had been suffering from memory loss since he was 70 years old.
Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, and began his music career in the mid-1960s.
Although he was a singer himself, many of his songs were better known through other artists, such as Ray Price’s US number one hit “For the Good Times” and Janis Joplin’s single “Me and Bobby McGee” in the mid-1970s. He formed the country supergroup The Highwaymen with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, and released three albums with them before all four resumed their solo careers.
Speaking about Kristofferson at the 2009 awards ceremony, his former bandmate Nelson said, “There’s no better songwriter in the world.”
“Everything he wrote was the standard, and we all had to accept it,” Nelson said.
Kristofferson won a Grammy Award for his hit song “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and was inducted into the county Music Hall of Fame in 2004.
As an actor, he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture in 1976 for his performance opposite Barbra Streisand in the romantic drama A Star Is Born.
The film was a remake of the 1937 original starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was later adapted into a musical starring Judy Garland and James Mason, and again in 2018 starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.
Kristofferson appeared opposite Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and opposite Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s Blade in 1998.
From janitor to hitmaker
Before his stage and film career, Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer and also earned a master’s degree in English from Oxford University. He then turned down an offer to teach at the U.S. Military Academy in New York to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
Hoping to get into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studios.
In a 2006 interview, Kristofferson said his career might not have happened without Cash, who first brought him on stage.
Joplin, with whom he had a close relationship, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGehee a man and cut her version just days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. The song became a number one hit after Joplin’s death.
In 1973, Kristofferson married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and launched a successful duets career, winning two Grammy Awards. They divorced in 1980.
The singer is survived by his wife Lisa, eight children and seven grandchildren, reported NBC, sky News’ US partner channel.