Dear listeners,
“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris,” Bob Dylan once said of Kris Kristofferson, who died on Saturday, “because he changed everything.”
That’s high praise coming from Dylan, especially considering that when they first crossed paths in Nashville’s Columbia Recording Studios in 1966, Dylan was recording his opus “Blonde on Blonde” — and Kristofferson was the studio’s janitor, lingering in the halls with his own dreams of songwriting glory. A few years later, he’d finally achieve them, thanks to artists like Ray Price, Roger Miller and Johnny Cash, who all had hits with early Kristofferson compositions. Then came Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee,” which posthumously topped the pop chart and gave Kristofferson, as he once put it, “the biggest shot of fame that I ever got at that time. It was never the same after that.”
Though a household name thanks mostly to his acting career, Kristofferson never achieved more than modest success as a solo recording artist. I happen to love that gruff, mumbly Everyman quality of his voice, but I recognize that it’s an acquired taste. That’s probably why so many Kristofferson songs are better known by other singers’ interpretations, whether it’s Joplin’s “Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” or a whole host of other musicians who have tackled his breakthrough breakup ballad “For the Good Times.”
Today’s playlist is a compilation of some of the best of those covers, from artists as varied as Al Green, Waylon Jennings and Tom Verlaine. If you’d like to hear Kristofferson’s words in his own ragged drawl, consider this a companion piece to the excellent playlist that Jon Pareles put together, featuring 12 of Kristofferson’s essential songs.
Lastly, a quick programming note: I’m going to be taking the next few weeks off from writing The Amplifier so I can get some work done on the book I’ve been trying to write. I have a few great guest playlisters lined up while I’m out, and they’ll be sending you an Amplifier once a week, each Tuesday. Enjoy their eclectic selections, and you’ll hear from me again soon!
I ain’t saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Gladys Knight & the Pips: “Help Me Make It Through the Night”
“Recently, I heard a most beautiful song with a dynamic lyric that really expresses this feeling of loneliness,” Gladys Knight says in a spoken-word introduction to this tender 1973 version of Kristofferson’s ode to a fleeting romantic encounter. Plenty of other artists have covered this classic — Sammi Smith’s Grammy-winning rendition might be the most famous — but there’s a soulful, almost ecstatic quality that sets Knight’s version apart.
2. Al Green: “For the Good Times”
Kristofferson had a particularly cleareyed way of writing about romance and heartache, but that sense of acceptance, and his narrators’ seeming inability to tell themselves comforting lies, only made his breakup songs that much more wrenching. “Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over,” goes the opening line of this plain-spoken tear-jerker, which the crooner Ray Price took to the top of the country chart in 1970. Al Green’s velvety version, which appeared on his 1972 album “I’m Still in Love With You,” stretches to an unhurried six-and-a-half minutes, as though he’s trying to prolong that final night spent together that Kristofferson depicts in the song.
3. Johnny Cash: “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
Johnny Cash strikes a quintessentially Kristoffersonian balance of pathos and dark humor on his reading of the drifter’s anthem “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” (which he spelled slightly differently). In a 2013 NPR interview, Kristofferson said this tune “opened up a whole a lot of doors for me. So many people that I admired, admired it. Actually, it was the song that allowed me to quit working for a living.”
4. Waylon Jennings: “To Beat the Devil”
Kristofferson’s fellow Highwayman Waylon Jennings covered plenty of his compositions throughout his career (see, for one notable example, his uncharacteristically gentle rendition of “The Taker”), but I’m partial to Jennings’s 1972 recording of “To Beat the Devil,” a Faustian talking blues about a struggling Nashville singer-songwriter “with a stomach full of empty and a pocket full of dreams.”
5. Merle Haggard: “Why Me”
Kristofferson’s biggest hit as a recording artist was “Why Me,” a down-and-out gospel tune that topped the country chart in 1973 — the only No. 1 of his whole career. “Why Me” (sometimes under the title “Why Me Lord”) has since been covered by artists like Elvis Presley, Tanya Tucker and CeCe Winans; Merle Haggard also included this moving rendition on his 1981 gospel album, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
6. Bob Dylan: “They Killed Him”
Kristofferson struggled to find his musical footing in the early 1980s, until the formation of the country supergroup the Highwaymen. After that band’s success, in 1986, Kristofferson released his first solo album in five years, the politically charged “Repossessed.” “They Killed Him” is a passionate tribute to various martyrs (Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and finally, Jesus Christ); Bob Dylan covered it on his own 1986 release, “Knocked Out Loaded.” Though bogged down with some unfortunate ’80s production choices (that children’s choir, oof), Dylan delivers the song with heart and a genuine appreciation for Kristofferson’s convictions.
7. Rita Coolidge: “Nobody Wins”
In 1973, Brenda Lee had a midcareer hit with her swooning version of “Nobody Wins,” a resigned breakup song that Kristofferson wrote for his fourth album, “Jesus Was a Capricorn.” Two decades later, the singer-songwriter Rita Coolidge imbued her own lush, torchy rendition with another layer of emotion — since she was the songwriter’s ex-wife. “It’s too late to try and save what might have been,” Coolidge croons with a sigh. “It’s over, and nobody wins.”
8. Willie Nelson: “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)”
Willie Nelson released an entire album of Kristofferson covers, the aptly titled “Sings Kristofferson,” in 1979. This warm interpretation of one of Kristofferson’s most straightforwardly romantic songs is a clear highlight.
9. Tom Verlaine: “The Hawk”
For the 2002 compilation “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down: A Tribute to Kris Kristofferson,” the Television frontman Tom Verlaine recorded a melancholic rendering of “The Hawk,” a deep cut from “Repossessed.” Verlaine’s cracked warble gives his performance a stirring air of desperation.
10. Janis Joplin: “Me and Bobby McGee”
Finally, I had to include the most iconic of all Kristofferson covers, Janis Joplin’s blazing, elegiac “Me and Bobby McGee.” Joplin and Kristofferson were close (and briefly romantically linked) before her untimely death, and he didn’t get to hear her version of “Bobby McGee” until just after she’d passed. “I love it because of the passion and the heart and the soul that she put into everything she did,” he said in a late-career interview. “But in that one I can just hear her sayin’, ‘Wait til this sonofabitch hears this.’”
The Amplifier Playlist
“10 Unforgettable Kris Kristofferson Covers” track list
Track 1: Gladys Knight & the Pips, “Help Me Make It Through the Night”
Track 2: Al Green, “For the Good Times”
Track 3: Johnny Cash, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
Track 4: Waylon Jennings, “To Beat the Devil”
Track 5: Merle Haggard, “Why Me”
Track 6: Bob Dylan, “They Killed Him”
Track 7: Rita Coolidge, “Nobody Wins”
Track 8: Willie Nelson, “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)”
Track 9: Tom Verlaine, “The Hawk”
Track 10: Janis Joplin, “Me and Bobby McGee”
Bonus Tracks
I love this 1978 video of Cash and Kristofferson doing “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” together; a visibly humbled Kristofferson calls it “the proudest” moment of his life.
And, if you’re looking for new music, Jon Pareles and I have you covered on this week’s Friday Playlist, where you’ll hear new tracks from Bartees Strange, Waxahatchee, the Weather Station and more. Listen here.
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