Five (or maybe ten) of his best songs

Kris Kristofferson has always been modest about his talent.

He did not like being called a poet and preferred others to recite his songs.

“I sing like a bullfrog,” he once told record producer Fred Foster.

“Yes,” replied Foster, “but a bullfrog that communicates.”

Kristofferson's clean vocals may have lacked range, but they had something more important – conviction.

As he sang of loss, love, heartache, drunken nights and regrettable mornings, you believed every word.

That's partly because he never forced a song – “I always had to wait until something came to me and I could write it,” he once said – but also because he came to terms with the simple truth of a feeling could.

His songwriting wasn't particularly complex, but what he could create with a few chords and a well-executed phrase sparked a revolution in country music.

“You can look at Nashville before and after Kris, because he changed everything,” Bob Dylan once said.

To mark his Death at the age of 88here's a guide to some of his most memorable songs.

One of Kristofferson's most enduring songs, Me and Bobby McGeestarted as a songwriting challenge.

Monument Records founder Foster had a crush on his secretary Barbara “Bobbie” McKee and wanted a song that would impress her.

Kristofferson accepted the commission – but the search for inspiration took time.

“I avoided him (Foster) for three or four months because only thoughts were running through my head,” he said in 1973.

“I was driving back to New Orleans one night when the windshield wipers broke and everything fell apart.”

He based the song on the final scene of the Fellini film “La Strada” (The Street), in which a broken, drunken man stares at the sea and despairs about what has become of his life and the love he has lost.

Kristofferson transformed this story into the story of two drifters who find love on the road and are ultimately separated by death.

It contains one of his greatest texts: “Freedom is just another word for nothing you can lose / Nothing is worth nothing – but it’s free.”

Originally recorded by Roger Miller, it became a number one hit for Janis Joplin, who recorded it a few weeks before her death in 1970.

“Well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head up that didn't hurt.

“And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had another for dessert.”

The desolation of Kristofferson's downbeat delivery shows that this song is about much more than just a bad hangover.

And the further it progresses, the more the protagonist reveals about the causes of his alcohol-soaked existence.

The smell of fried chicken reminds him of “something I had lost.”

And he stops in front of a Sunday school just to hear the children singing.

The loneliness and self-loathing come through clearly – and Kristofferson said he wrote the lyrics as a struggling musician living in a rental house after his parents disowned him and his wife and child moved to California without him.

“Sunday was the worst day of the week if you didn’t have family,” he said.

Legend has it that Kristofferson got the song into the hands of Johnny Cash by landing a helicopter in his backyard and refusing to leave until he listened to his demo tape.

Cash was so impressed that he played the song on his US television show.

And the Country Music Association named his recording Song of the Year in 1970.

Kristofferson's own version appeared on his debut album the same year.

Along with artists like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, Kristofferson was part of the “outlaw country” scene that fought against Nashville's commercial and creative control.

When he spoke about his place in the country's firmament in 1970, he told the New York Times: “I’m nobody’s best friend.

“People kept telling me that I would never make it in Nashville, that I should go to California or New York.”

He had angered the establishment with songs like “Blame It on the Stones” and “The Law Is for the Protection of the People,” which took a swipe at American conservatism.

His most famous song It also attracted excitement for its straightforward depiction of sexual desire, particularly when it was recorded (and taken to number one) by country star Sammi Smith.

Kristofferson said the lyrics were inspired by a Frank Sinatra interview.

When asked what he believed in, Old Blue Eyes had replied, “Alcohol, women, or a Bible…whatever helps me get through the night.”

Smith's sultry delivery was a subversive advance for country music, but Kristofferson's own version – raspy-voiced and dripping with hunger – is just as exciting.

“The first good song I wrote,” Kristofferson said Jody and the child, which he composed while working as a janitor at Columbia Records in the 1960s

Like “Me and Bobby McGee,” it is steeped in nostalgia and loss, as the musician describes a girl who walked everywhere with him, “her little blue jeans rolled up to her knees.”

Over time, they fall in love, grow older and still walk hand in hand wherever they go.

At the end of the song, the narrator retraces her old ways with her daughter – but when the locals greet them, he regrets that his wife is no longer there to join them.

Kristofferson's dark, emotional voice is both mesmerizing and heartbreaking.

It's also worth listening to his 1999 re-recording of the song (on the album The Austin Sessions), where his older, gruffer voice gives him added pathos.

If the character in “Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down” was at a low point, that means he's hit rock bottom.

“Lord, what have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I have known?“

Kristofferson was moved to write the song after attending a service at Jimmie Snow's church in Nashville.

“Everyone knelt down and Jimmy said something like, 'If anyone is lost, raise their hand'” he said.

“I don't go to church often and the thought of raising my hand was out of the question.

“I thought, 'I can't imagine who does this,' when suddenly I felt my hand go up.”

After speaking with the preacher, Kristofferson said, “I cried in public” and felt a “forgiveness that I didn't even know I needed.”

The song functions as a response to this moment – ​​a slow, sad realization of his past behavior and a soul cry for forgiveness.

Taken with his future wife Rita Cooolidge Gospel-infused ballad hit a big hit with audiences in 1973 and gave the star his only number one on the country charts.

6) I hate your ugly face – The first song Kristofferson wrote at the age of 11. A sarcastic rejection of country tropes that reveals the early development of his talent for storytelling.

7) They killed him – A lament for Kristofferson's heroes – Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King – later reinterpreted by Dylan. “Having Dylan cover one of your songs is like being a playwright and having Shakespeare act in your play,” Kristofferson said.

8) Loving her was easier (than anything I'll ever do again) – One of his most romantic songs and Kristofferson's first chart hit in 1971. He later re-recorded it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of outlaw country artists that also included Cash, Jennings and Nelson.

9) Here comes that rainbow again – Inspired by a scene in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, this touching ballad is about retribution for small acts of kindness. Cash once said it “might be my favorite song by any writer.”

10) Please don't tell me how the story ends – Two lovers spend one last night together, clinging to their memories (and each other), hoping an inevitable separation never occurs. Kristofferson wrote it in the early 1970s and initially gave it to Billy Bare, but later revised it with Rita Coolidge just as her marriage was falling apart. Their duet is devastating.