Kris Kristofferson, Kristofferson
Featured Album
What else would you expect from a Rhodes scholar?
What a difference a year makes. When Rhodes scholar, helicopter pilot, janitor at Dylan's Blonde on Blonde sessions and ascendant Nashville songwriter Kristofferson released his debut album for Monument Records, simply entitled Kristofferson, in 1970, it sank like a rock in a mossy pond. But after the overdose death of his girlfriend Janis Joplin and the posthumous success of Pearl — with the Kristofferson-penned "Me & Bobby McGee" the album's hit single — a simple re-titling of that same album as Me & Bobby McGee in 1971 made him a star.
"I ain't saying I beat the devil," Kris Kristofferson croaks on the song of the same name, "but I drank his beer for nothing/ And then I stole his song/ And you can still hear me singing." And so a long fruitful career has ensued, not only as a country singer and songwriter with few parallels, but also as an actor and Hollywood star. The roots of such success lie here. Originals later turned into smash country hits by the likes of Ray Price ("For the Good Times"), Jerry Lee Lewis ("Me & Bobby McGee"), Joe Simon and O.C. Smith ("Help Me Make It Through the Night") and on and on appear here, stripped down and down-home.
It speaks to Kristofferson's genius that amid the notoriously stolid and conservative Nashville country music industry that "The Law is for the Protection of the People" tucks in all sorts of psychedelic stingers while "Blame It On the Stones" defends his long-haired rock brethren. For honky-tonk number "Best of All Possible Worlds," he even quotes Voltaire. But what else would you expect from a Rhodes scholar?
