Even though nearly three decades past the peak of a storied career, Kris Kristofferson still deserved a better venue than the backroom of a smoky Minnesota gambling casino. The sound was bad, the lighting was bad, and the grizzled storyteller occasionally cussed aloud at his inability to grab barr chords on the Gibson J-45 that fit his voice so well. It was raw music in a raw place.
But the 50 or so brave fans who’d inched their way through a cold February night could give a damn about raw. Low rent surroundings and all, the author of some of the most roughshod, poignant songs in the great American songbook was close enough to shake hands. They’d come to hear their old friend sing and talk his way through the soundtracks of their best and worst days. That was it. No veneer required.
That intimate solo tour wasn’t Kristofferson’s last, but the declining voice and guitar skills would soon limit him to performing with group ensembles - often with younger artists he’d influenced along the way to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
He pushed through a few more years, then stopped performing and recording in 2021. There were a few exceptions, but very few. Sept. 28 Kris Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, at age 88.
As with the characters in some of his best songs, Kristofferson’s life was anything but linear and conventional: A singer/songwriter who was alternately a Golden Gloves boxer, Army helicopter pilot, Rhodes scholar, Columbia Records custodian, in-demand actor, one-quarter of a country music supergroup and husband to a talented pop music star/songwriter (Rita Coolidge).
The resulting genius — and it was just that — was an innate ability to capture human yearning, and bring it forth with simple tunes and chords: “Help Me Make it Through the Night” and “For the Good Times” are pleas for intimacy: “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” and “Me and Bobby McGee” depict the despised, looking not for respectability, but respect; “Jesus Was a Capricorn” and 2009’s “Sister Sinead” (written following Kristofferson’s onstage support for Sinead O’Connor) are bald supplications for those who have been scapegoated, even despised.
And then there’s the cut many consider Kristofferson’s finest, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (1970) - a universal yearning for another time, another place, another self. Some references are straight out of Hank Williams (beer for breakfast, frying chicken), others from the 17th century English poets Kristofferson read while at Oxford (sidewalks that sleep, lonely bells that echo through urban canyons).
There is a recognizable yearning shot through Kristofferson’s best songs, And beyond.
Kristofferson’s personal lives (plural) were many. There were periods of stability, and there were dumpster fires. He did not spare himself and others the drinking, drugging and infidelity that plagued most of his peers. People got hurt, some badly.
Some people were helped, too. The short list of charities and causes Kristofferson adopted included aid for small-scale farmers, fair working conditions for migrant workers, aid and support for Palestinians. He was outwardly critical of U.S. involvement in Central America during the Reagan and George Walker Bush administrations, and endorsed Democratic candidates on several occasions.
Sadly, much of Kristofferson’s catalog came in for the same overproduction other “realism” musicians faced in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Too many strings, too many walls of sound that threatened to bury his turn of a homespun phrase, or a veiled reference from John Bunyan. Such were the times.
But in the end, not even the drone of studio backwash could separate us from his sublime yearning, within and without:
“And he keeps right on a changin’ for the better or the worse/And searchin’ for a shrine he’s never found/Never knowin’ if believin’ is a blessin’ or a curse/Or if the going up is worth the comin’ down” - The Pilgrim, Chapter 33”
Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024
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