by Mike Clark, West Chester, PA

In the fall of 1970, I was in the boonies of Vietnam being forced to listen to the country music segment of the armed forces radio when one evening I heard that somebody named Kris Kristofferson had been named country music songwriter of the year. He had four songs at one time on the country top ten: Help Me Make it Through the Night, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Me and Bobby Magee, and one more. I was impressed — I mean, that’s like the Beatles, four in the top ten — but I immediately formed a mental image of a guy in Coke-bottle glasses and a pearl button shirt.

Within days of returning to the states in February, I saw Kristofferson on the Johnny Carson show and my opinion changed. I found out his back-story and bought his album. His versions were much more appealing to me than the overproduced covers by the name brand stars I had heard in the Nam.

I visited a cousin in North Jersey and we ran in to New York to see Kristofferson and Billy Swann and a tight band play his songs at a small, probably famous coffee house. He was just lifting off on what he called his “rocket to stardom.”

The memorable moment? Less than four months from me being in Southeast Asia and Kris being at an awards banquet in Nashville, we had a conversation in the men’s room of the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA.