He died peacefully and surrounded by his family at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Texas native wrote such classics standards as Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, Help Me Make it Through the Night, For The Good Times and Me And Bobby McGee.
Kris Kristofferson on stage in August 1973 (AP)
Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning For the Good Times or Janis Joplin belting out Me And Bobby McGee.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair, bell-bottomed trousers and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with peers such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T Hall.
“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”
As an actor, Kristofferson played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out westerns and cowboy dramas.
He received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for 1976 romantic drama A Star Is Born, opposite Streisand.
He was a Golden Gloves boxer and American football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford, and turned down an appointment to teach at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
Kris Kristofferson poses for a portrait in Nashville in 1995 (Mark Humphrey/AP)
Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal Blonde On Blonde double album.
At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Johnny Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former US Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down with a beer in one hand.
Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, but the Man in Black was not at home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut, and he certainly could not fly a helicopter holding a beer.
In a 2006 interview with the Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.
“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said.
“It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”
Kris Kristofferson in concert in Pennsylvania in 2019 (Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP)
One of his most recorded songs, Me And Bobby McGee, was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called Me And Bobby McKee, named after a female secretary in his building.
Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine Performing Songwriter that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film La Strada.
Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous number one hit for Joplin.
Hits recorded by Kristofferson include Why Me, Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do), Watch Closely Now, Desperados Waiting For A Train, A Song I’d Like To Sing and Jesus Was A Capricorn.
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.
Sharing a tribute on Instagram, Streisand said “I knew he was something special” the first time she saw him perform.
“Barefoot and strumming his guitar, he seemed like the perfect choice for a script I was developing, which eventually became A Star Is Born,” she wrote.
The film scored the Oscar for best original song, for the song titled Evergreen.
Streisand continued: “In the movie, Kris and I sang the song I’d written for the film’s main love theme, ‘Evergreen’.
“For my latest concert in 2019 at London’s Hyde Park, I asked Kris to join me on-stage to sing our other A Star Is Born duet, ‘Lost Inside Of You.’
“He was as charming as ever, and the audience showered him with applause. It was a joy seeing him receive the recognition and love he so richly deserved.”
Among the musicians paying tribute to Kristofferson was US country star Dolly Parton, who wrote on Instagram: “What a great loss.
“What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend.
“I will always love you, Dolly.”
US singer and actress Reba McEntire posted an image of the pair laughing on stage, describing Kristofferson as “one of my favourite people”.
“What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words. I am so glad I got to meet him and be around him,” she added.
US star LeAnn Rimes also described him as “an epic human with the biggest heart”, on her Instagram story.
Among those paying tribute was Grammy-winning singer Travis Tritt who hailed him as an “inspiration”.
He added: “I was fortunate to get to know him on the set of “Outlaw Justice” that we filmed in Spain in 1998.
“My heartfelt condolences go out to Kris’s wife Lisa and all of his family, friends and fans.”
In 2004, Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The chief executive for the Country Music Hall of Fame, Kyle Young, said: “Kris Kristofferson believed creativity is God-given, and those who ignore such a gift are doomed to unhappiness.
“He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and his work gave voice not only to his soul but to ours. He leaves a resounding legacy.”
