The New York Times this morning gives Kris basically a 21-gun salute. Front page, just below the fold, with a large photo of Kris with his guitar. The jump fills 5 columns with a selection of 12 of his songs to sample in the Arts section.
Lyrics to Sunday Morning Coming Down are imbedded in the front page text, an anthem to hard drinking and hangovers that Johnny Cash immediately saw the affinity with.
Well, I woke up Sunday
morning
With no way to hold my head
that didn't hurt
And the beer I had for
breakfast wasn't bad
So I had one more for desert.
The song propelled Kris's songwriting from being a janitor in Nashville with the hope of selling songs (You gotta be where they sing 'em.) to what would become his career.
I saw the affinity in that song as well. There were many Sundays, and other days of the week, when I was drinking enough Budweiser to bathe a Clydsedale. It was my anthem as well, until 1985 when I quit, as Kris did eventually as well.
There are many great Kristofferson songs, but the one I think showed off all of his talent best was Here Comes That Rainbow Again, a song whose roots lay a scene from the movie The Grapes of Wrath when two Oakie kids come into a New Mexico roadside café on Route 66, stare at the candy display and ask about the price of some candies for the older sister and her little brother. He took a scene from a movie, from a John Steinbeck novel, and further told the story of the Depression.
Johnny Cash sang the song on a Letterman show and gave a little backstory to it. Kris on Elvis Costello's show Spectacle on the USA network gave the full back story, and is when I first became aware of the song.
The link to the video uses still images from the movie. Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas in 1936 to a military family where his father was a Major General in the Air Force. I'm sure growing up in the '30s Kris was well aware of the great migration of people to California along Route 66 as the drought from the Dust Bowl effectively ended farming for them in Texas, Oklahoma and other states.
A military career was expected of him, but the pull of literature and writing was too great. He was a Rhoades Scholar and a helicopter pilot in the Army where he was a Captain. He worked for oil companies after he left the Army, piloting helicopters traveling between oil rigs. After that, he devoted himself full-time to writing. I remember reading of one party he attended where he made his entrance after piloting a helicopter to the venue.
He was a rascal of a good-looking guy, with hooded, quick eyes, married three times, but content enough after quitting drinking to have five kids with Lisa Myers and a 41-year marriage that only ended when he passed away, to go along with the three kids he already had. Singer, songwriter, actor and producer.
There is a poignant video of him appearing with Rosanne Cash in 2023, looking gaunt but smiling infectiously, as they sing Loving Her Was Easier at the Hollywood Bowl. Rosanne's father Johnny and Kris were best of friends and singing partners.
Kris was born in the mid '30s; myself at the end of the '40s. Those born in the '30s are slipping away. We don't know how old we can become.
The NYT obituary by Bill Friskics-Warren ends appropriately with how Kris would want to be remembered as. His occupation on his passport: Writer.
He will be missed, but when they leave a body of work, he will be not forgotten. They don't write them like he did anymore.
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