Singer, songwriter and actor Kris Kristofferson has died at the age of 88

Kris Kristoffersonwith a polished writing style and rugged charisma that has made him a country superstar and Hollywood A-lister, died at his home in Maui, Hawaii, Family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email Saturday. He was 88 years old.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. The cause was not given.

In the late 1960s, the native of Brownsville, Texas wrote classics such as Sunday Morning Comin’ Down, Help me get through the night For the Good Times’ and Me and Bobby McGee. Kristofferson was a singer, but many of his songs were better known for being performed by others, whether it was Ray Price singing For a good timeSW Janis Joplin sing at the top of your lungs Me and Bobby McGee.

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake by heart, wove intricate folk lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With long hair, bell bottom pants and his counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylanrepresented a new generation of country music lyricists together with colleagues such as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There is no better living songwriter than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during the November 2009 BMI Kristofferson Awards. “Everything you write is the standard and we’ll all have to live with it.”

As an actor, he played the lead role alongside him Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstynbut he also had a taste for westerns with shootouts and cowboy dramas. He was known for his roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and A star is born (1976), which won him a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

He was a boxer and football player in college, He received an MA in English from Merton College, Oxford University. in England and turned down a teaching position at the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York to pursue songwriting in Nashville. In 1966, when Dylan recorded tracks for an influential double album, hoping to break into the industry, he was working as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio. Blonde on Blonde.

At times, Kristofferson’s legend was larger than life. Cash liked to tell a story, mostly with exaggeration, about how Kristofferson, a former US Army pilot, landed a helicopter in Cash’s yard to give him a tape Sunday Morning Comin’ Down with a beer in one hand. In interviews over the years, with all due respect to Cash, Kristofferson has said that while the helicopter landed at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t home at the time, the demo tape was a song that nobody really cut, and you certainly couldn’t fly in a helicopter with a beer in your hand .

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Presshe said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“When I was still in the military, when I shook his hand backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, I decided I was going to come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electrifying. He took me under his wing before he recorded any of my songs. He recorded my first album which was album of the year. He put me on stage for the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, Me and Bobby McGee, was written at the recommendation of Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster was referring to the title of the song, Me and Bobby McKeein honor of the secretary who worked in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview with the magazine Performing composerwho was inspired to write the text about a man and a woman who travel together after watching a film Federico Fellini, Strada.

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and recorded her version just days before she died of a drug overdose in 1970. The recording became a posthumous number one hit for Joplin.

Kristofferson’s hits include: Why Me, Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do), Watch Close Now, Desperados Waiting for a Train, A Song Id Like to Sing and Jesus was a Capricorn.

In 1973, he married a composer Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful career as a duo that won them two Grammy Awards. They divorced in 1980.

(With information from AP)