Kris Kristofferson

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Sun Jan 30, 2005 9:39 am

I'm just listening to some of Kris Kristofferson's records, and I wonder why I rarely found his name in here. Next on my list, btw, is Willie's "Across the borderline".

I'd like to know what you think about the man who wrote "Me and Bobbie McGee"?

Tom

Bobbie · Post by **Bobbie** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:04 am

Love it. Love Janis Joplin's version, too.

I can't count the # of times that song has been song to me over the years...

Kris is a very talented man... I like his stuff.. and Willie's too! Looks like we have a couple of things in common with music!

Bobbie (not McGee)

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:06 am

Great actor, really great, and even greater singer. I have his two best of CDs form 1970s, and I do hear how "Cohen opened the way to people like Kristofferson". I never considered Willie Nelson more than as a great country man somewhere there, probably because I have that tendention to Cohen-like vocals, so I like Johnny Cash and Kris more.
And his Bobby McGee is excellent. I will never catch that Joplin girl, I guess it's simply not my kind of music. While Kris is slow, passionate, deep and everything he can be. I remember when I got the best of few years ago, I was thinking "well, that's country".
I know he reactivated his singing career from mid 1990s; somebody told me he's even better now (there's some excellent Austin City Limits record I think).

linda_lakeside · Post by **linda_lakeside** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:31 am

I love the song Me and Bobbie McGee, of course, I'm not so sure of Kris himself, though. When he was hanging with Waylon and Willie and the boys, I blush when I think what kinds of nonsense they all got up to. I used to love Janis, not so much now.

Kris, as you probably know, said he was going to use part of "Bird on the Wire" as his epitaph. From what I understand (from liner notes) LC said he would be "hurt if he didn't". Words to that effect.

I haven't heard any of Kris' recent material (is there any?) but I've never thought of him as much of a singer. That said, Sunday Morning Coming Down was never done better, in my humblest of opinions. Also, a song that keeps coming up in the most recent funerals I've been to

, "Why Me Lord". Which goes a bit like this: Lord help me, Jesus/I've wasted it so/Help me Jesus/I know what I am/But now that I know/That I've needed you so/Help me, Jesus/My soul's in your hands. Beautiful.

Linda

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:52 am

according to allmusic:

A Moment of Forever (1995) - the "comeback album" they said
The Austin Sessions (1999)
Broken Freedom Songs_ Live from San Francisco (2003)
The Essential Kris Kristofferson (2004) - in the same series as Leonard's

Hmm, it seems they're all live or best ofs expect the acclaimed 1995 album.? Anyway, the first two are worth getting I presume.

Kush · Post by **Kush** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:59 pm

"...on top of that, he's one of the funniest sons of bitches on the planet."

- Kris Kristofferson on Willie Nelson

bo fisher · Post by **bo fisher** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 5:15 pm

I liked some of his older albums quite a lot, "Border Lord" being my favorite.

Bo

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:20 am

She would meet me in the morning
On my way down to the river
Waiting patient by the chinaberry tree
With her feet already dusty
from the pathway to the levy
And her little blue jeans rolled up to her knees

I'd pay her no attention
As she tagged along beside me
Trying hard to copy everything I did
But I couldn't keep from smiling
When I'd hear somebody saying
Looky yonder there goes jody and the kid

Even after we grew older
We could still be seen together
As we walked along the levy holding hands
For as surely as the season she was changin' to a woman
And I'd lived enough to call myself a man

And she often lay beside me
In the coolness of the evening
Til' the morning sun was shining on my bed
And at times when she was sleeping
I'd smile when I'd remember
How they use to call us jody and the kid

Now the world's a little older
And the years have changed the river
Cause there's houses where they didn't used to be
And on sundays I go walking
Down the pathway to the levy
With another little girl who follows me

And it makes the old folks smile
To see her tag along beside me
Doing little things the way her mama did
But it gets a little lonesome
When I hear somebody sayin'
Looky yonder there goes jody and the kid.

--------------

I agree this is not great poetry, but it's very good song.

tom

jurica · Post by **jurica** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 3:35 pm

Tom Sakic wrote:Great actor, really great, and even greater singer. I have his two best of CDs form 1970s, and I do hear how "Cohen opened the way to people like Kristofferson". I never considered Willie Nelson more than as a great country man somewhere there, probably because I have that tendention to Cohen-like vocals, so I like Johnny Cash and Kris more.
And his Bobby McGee is excellent. I will never catch that Joplin girl, I guess it's simply not my kind of music. While Kris is slow, passionate, deep and everything he can be. I remember when I got the best of few years ago, I was thinking "well, that's country".

well, just when i thought we only had LC, TW and BO in common when it comes to music - here i'll second everything that you wrote.

Willie is perhaps too American for us. i can hear nothing but pathetic, cheap lyrics and cowboy sentiment there. i think they (the rest of the world) would find 'Buco i Srdjan' to be that way to them

Byron · Post by **Byron** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 6:31 pm

Did I read somewhere that KK was a military pilot and is highly qualified, academically?

linda_lakeside · Post by **linda_lakeside** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:10 pm

Get out of my way, you stupid bear.

I never thought of Kris as an 'actor' at all. He was just some good-looking -oh-whatta-country-cliche type of guy.

tom didn't name the song he quoted and I'm not familiar enough with Kris' work to know it, but I could definitely feel that it was a song, not a poem and with his country-type of delivery, I could hear the song.

He probably won't go down in history as one of the greatest of anything, but he is still pretty damn good.

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:07 am

Byron,

The eldest of three children of an Air Force major general who retired from the military to head up air operations for the Saudi Arabian company Aramco, Kristofferson spent most of his childhood in Brownsville, TX, though his family moved around, finally settling in San Mateo, CA, by his junior high-school years. He graduated from San Mateo High School in 1954 and entered Pomona College in Claremont, CA. There he studied creative writing and he won first prize and three other placements in a collegiate short-story contest sponsored by Atlantic Monthly magazine. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1958, having secured a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to continue his studies at Oxford University in England. While at Oxford, he wrote and performed his own songs(...)
After earning a master's degree in English literature from Oxford in 1960, Kristofferson intended to continue his studies there. But during a Christmas break back home in California, he resumed his relationship with an old girlfriend, Fran Beir, and they married. Instead of returning to Oxford, he joined the Army. Like his father, he became a pilot, learning to fly helicopters. He was assigned to West Germany and went there with his wife and their daughter. During the early '60s, while rising to the rank of captain, he eventually returned to writing and performing, organizing a soldiers' band to play at service clubs. Hearing his songs, a friend suggested sending them to a relative of his, the Nashville songwriter Marijohn Wilkin. Kristofferson did so and he received encouragement from Wilkin, who had become a music publisher by founding Bighorn Music. In 1965, Kristofferson was reassigned to the West Point military academy, where he was to become an English instructor. He spent a two-week leave in June 1965 in Nashville, where he looked up Wilkin and decided to try to become a country songwriter instead. He resigned his commission and moved his family to Nashville, signing to Bighorn, which gave him a small weekly stipend that he augmented with a variety of jobs, including janitorial work, bartending, and flying helicopters to and from offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:30 am

Linda, I think he'll deserve more than that. Think of the songs like Sunday Morning Coming Down, Help Me Make It Through The Night, and Loving Her Was Easier. (I have Songs of Kristofferson) Those are real masterpieces; I remember when I first time hear them on that CD I thought "Why isn't he better known". But on the other side, I think Kristofferson is better known than i.e. Townes Van Zandt, John Prine or anyone form the Austin scene, at least when it comes to the commercial radio.
Jurica, I agree with your accurate desciption of Willie Nelson - sorry Kush

But I believe you two have something in common: Jacques Brel (whose shouting-instead-of-singing isn't close to my ears).

Now, Kristofferson as actor. Yes, he stuck into the cliche-roles of western-guys (tough but with heart) lately, or in movies like Blade and countless TV productions. That's due to breakdown of his last major work, Heaven's Gate in 1981. Maybe you'll recollect its director, Michael Cimino (one of my favourite). After the enormous succes of his first major movie Deer Hunter in 1978, which already was too ambitious in some points but nevertheles a big success, Oscar-winning and still regarded as classic film, he got little overambitious and shooted Heaven's Gate with Kristofferson. The movie was 219 minutes long, costs too many and was called Hell's Gate. In the end two studios bakrupted because of its failure, Cimino never recovered from it (only 4 movies after that, and very bad, like The Sicilian or Sunchaser). That film signed the end of "New Hollywood" era. Unfortunately, one of the best actors of New Hollywood movement, Kris Kristofferson, also sunk with the movie. He came to act second-rate country-singers in B-movies. Just look at his movies' list at IMDB, after 1981 his first major roles in A-movies were in 1996 (Lone Star, and stupid but commercial action movies like Fire Down Bellow and Blade)! 15 years of TV and B production. And in the 70s, he acted in masterpieces like Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, or Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garret and Billy The Kid, where he played Billy the Kid beside James Coburn as Pat Garett and Bob Dylan as Alias.

Byron · Post by **Byron** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 3:01 pm

Thanks Tom. I knew that KK had some hidden talent in his past somewhere. Oxford, ay? Strewth and blimey!

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 4:09 pm

Tom,

I think "Pat Garret & Billy The Kid" is a great movie, but this more to be credited to Sam Peckinpah (director), Harry Stradling Jr. (Camera) and the excellent team of editors: David Berlatsky, Robert L. Wolfe, Tony De Zarraga, Roger Spottiswoode, Garth Craven, Richard Halsey.

Something similar could be said about "Convoy", though there it's Graeme Clifford instead or Spottiswoode.

The more I look at Sam Peckinpah's films the more I find their strong sides on the editing side of film making. But this is just my impression as a layman of the trade.

KK's performance as actor, to my mind, never was much above mediocrity, though a mediocrity brilliantly mis en scène....

tom