![]() ![]() ![]() Being 76 is older than I ever thought I’d be. Your album is titled Feeling Mortal, but the general vibe of these songs conveys more gratitude than any sense of dread. Now in his fifth decade as a recording artist and his eighth decade on the planet, Kristofferson remains a vital lyrical and musical force, as his current renaissance demonstrates. After that, he continued acting prolifically, but his recorded output slowed in the ’80s and ’90s - although his status as a musical icon was underlined by his membership in the country supergroup the Highwaymen, alongside fellow iconoclasts Cash, Jennings and Willie Nelson. Soon after, he launched a prolific acting career, which he balanced with a steady stream of LP releases through the remainder of the decade. Kristofferson began releasing his own albums in 1970, the same year that Janis Joplin’s reading of his “Me and Bobby McGee” introduced him to rock audiences. His compositions became hits in the hands of such performers as Cash (“Sunday Morning Comin’ Down”), Ray Price (“For the Good Times”), Waylon Jennings (“The Taker”), Sammi Smith (“Help Me Make It Through the Night”), Bobby Bare (“Come Sundown”), Roger Miller (“Loving Her Was Easier”), Faron Young (“Your Time’s Comin’”), Brenda Lee (“Nobody Wins”) and Jerry Lee Lewis (“Once More with Feeling”). It was in the latter capacity that he first met future friend and collaborator Johnny Cash, upon whose lawn Kristofferson once landed a helicopter in an attempt to get him to listen to his songs.Īlthough early Nashville efforts yielded limited results, by the end of the decade, Kristofferson’s songs - whose vivid forthrightness and unsparing self-examination had little precedent in mainstream country - had made him a hot property in Music City. In 1965, he abandoned his military career and moved to Nashville to pursue a life as a professional songwriter, supplementing his income by tending bar, flying helicopters to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and working as a janitor at Columbia Studios. Army and became a captain and helicopter pilot - composing songs and performing with a band on the side. ![]() After earning a master’s degree in English literature, he joined the U.S. He began writing and performing his own songs while at Oxford, launching a brief, abortive rock ’n’ roll career as Kris Carson, although his goal at the time was to become a novelist. The Brownsville, Texas-born son of an Air Force major general, he attended high school and college in California, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1958 with a Rhodes scholarship to continue his education at Oxford University in England. Kristofferson’s singular resume - Golden Gloves boxer, Rhodes scholar, military officer, helicopter pilot, movie star and outlaw icon - would have been worthy of examination even if his songwriting hadn’t permanently changed the face of country music in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Like its two predecessors, Feeling Mortal was produced by Don Was (who first worked with Kristofferson on 1995’s A Moment of Forever), and features stark, stripped-down arrangements that showcase Kristofferson’s rough-edged yet expressive voice and his matter-of-factly eloquent songs. But the album’s tone is more celebratory than fatalistic, surveying its subject matter with gratitude and appreciation rather than dread or regret. ![]() As its title suggests, Feeling Mortal - Kristofferson’s first release on his own KK label - finds the artist confronting the inevitable while looking back on his own reckless youth with typically unflinching insight. ![]()
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