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Help Me Make It Through the Birthday: Kris Kristofferson turns 80

Kris Kristofferson turns 80 on Wednesday, June 22, which for me is hard to imagine. I remember him as one of the best songwriters I've ever heard. For this Brownsville, Texas native, the golden era was the 1970s, when he wrote such classics as "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Me and Bobby McGee" -- which Janis Joplin took to the top of the charts -- and "Sunday Morning Coming Down," whose cover by Johnny Cash launched Kristofferson's career. "Me and Bobby McGee" contains the line, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Ain't many lyrics better -- or even as good -- as that one.

As Rolling Stone wrote in this article, dubbed "The Essential Kris Kristofferson," he laid out the Texas humor in "Best of All Possible Worlds," his "ode to wine and lonely girls" in which "it's the jailer who tells the truth: 'If booze was just a dime a bottle, boy, you couldn't even buy the smell."

As many of you know, Kristofferson became an actor, and a damn good one, appearing in such films as Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Blume in Love, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, A Star Is Born (for which he won a Golden Globe) and such Texas specials as Semi-Tough, Songwriter and Lone Star, among so many others.

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I had the pleasure of meeting Kristofferson at a benefit concert for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Rapid City, S.D., on July 2, 1989, a spotlight he shared with Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson and John Denver. Kris was friendly, funny and utterly unpretentious. After our meeting, I read up on him. His background is amazing. He once earned a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University. Later, he joined the U.S. Army and ascended to the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot but resigned in 1965 to pursue songwriting. He got a job sweeping floors in a Nashville, Tenn., studio, where he met Johnny Cash.

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Happy birthday, Kris. Thanks much for all the great songs and movies. I read that Kris recently suffered some health problems but is doing much better now.

Here's a YouTube clip of Kris singing "Me and Bobby McGee":

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Here's the trailer for Lone Star