We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago……
He made a living writing songs about the wrong side of life. The destitute, the addicted and booze riddled souls who might live another day but then again might not. He also wrote about the loss of love and the search for it as well.
So when Kris Kristofferson found love with Rita Coolidge and also had a religious experience at a church gathering with Larry Gatlin, it should come as no surprise that his song-writing might change as well.
“Jesus Was A Capricorn” had a number of interesting tunes including “Why Me”…a religious tale that saved the album from dying a painful death and went to #1 nearly a year after the LP was released. He also does a duet with Gatlin on Larry’s song “Help Me”, about as basic as a cry for help can be.
The title track channels his inner fandom of John Prine’s songs. You remember it was Kris who wrote the liner notes for Prine’s debut and he was fan. The song deals with all of the societal problems going on at the time as no-one was really getting along with anyone else. Prine could have wrote it which is high praise.
The tune for “Sugar Man” is a straight lift from “St James Infirmary” and the tale is a sordid one about a heroin addicted prostitute…showing he still had those kinds of lyrical chops.
The song “Jesse Younger” is a thinly veiled screed against his straight-laced family who had basically dis-owned him when he left the military for a country-music life.
He also does a couple of nice duets with Coolidge and gives us a solid country song in “Nobody Wins, that Brenda Lee had a hit with and Sinatra did too.
It’s not many song-writers who can claim that everyone from Elvis to Johnny Cash to Janis Joplin to Frank Sinatra covered his songs,,,but there you are.
It’s a polished record…maybe too polished for fans of Kristofferson’s rougher edges….but he was getting more polished too.
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