Two years ago, Rita's beloved sister, Priscilla, a successful session singer who was once married to soul star Booker T. Ten years later, the schizophrenic Gordon battered his mother with a hammer then stabbed her to death, for which he's still in jail.Ī nother murder was more recent and nearer to home. That was following her split from Gordon after he beat her up. When it later featured as part of Clapton's biggest hit, Layla, though, Gordon's name was on the writing credits, hers wasn't, costing her a fortune in royalties. With her lover - tall, blond, handsome star session drummer Jim Gordon - Rita says she wrote a song that they played for Eric Clapton. Nash is one of the few male celebrities who emerge well from this book he wrote Cherokee about Rita.įormer lover Leon Russell wrote the romantic Delta Lady for her, but when he suggested a threesome with his best buddy, she walked out. She went out with Stephen Stills but dumped him for fellow Crosby, Stills and Nash member Graham Nash David Crosby insists the resulting coolness between the two singers was the reason the band split up. Stunningly beautiful, the child of a Cherokee Baptist minister and a mother with Cherokee-Scottish ancestry, Rita attracted a succession of men famous on the Seventies West Coast music scene. Rita had enough experience of men to know things were unlikely to change.
Kristofferson pursued her frantically, begging her to come back. Rita and Kristofferson were together for eight years, married for six of them Eventually, suspecting that he had 'something going' with co-star Isabelle Huppert while filming Heaven's Gate, Rita took Casey and left. Kristofferson seemed to think he was entitled to do what he wanted when he was on the road alone. But if her husband's drinking had stopped, the womanising hadn't. Anywhere went platinum and the single from it, Higher, was huge. Meanwhile, Rita's solo career was going well. 'That's my life,' he said and stopped drinking immediately. Sometimes he was so drunk on stage that at the end of the show he'd offer the audience their money back.īut when one day he saw himself in A Star Is Born, playing a star singer in an alcoholic downward spiral, it shocked him. After he made A Star Is Born with Barbra Streisand, his fame exploded and the drinking escalated.
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The wedding night was spent not in the luxury hotel they'd booked, but back at McGuinn's house, where the two men stayed up late, drinking and playing pool while Rita had an early night.īy the late Seventies, Kristofferson was drinking from morning till night every day, sitting in his den watching a giant TV while Rita waited on him and looked after Casey. Rita, three months pregnant with their daughter Casey, needed a Valium to calm her down. He spent the eve of his wedding to Rita at the house of Roger McGuinn of The Byrds and was late for the ceremony.Įventually, he strolled in the worse for wear. He always wanted to know what she was doing and who she was with.Īs his acting career took off (he starred in movies such as Pat Garret And Billy The Kid and A Star Is Born), he drank more and more heavily. Kristofferson, who could not be counted on to be faithful, was overly possessive. But the relationship was always volatile. Their signature tune, Kris's romantic ballad Help Me Make It Through The Night, held listeners spellbound as they sang it to one another rather than to the audience.Īlthough Rita didn't have the best voice around, she could do emotion like few others.
Rita and Kristofferson were together for eight years, married for six of them.
Delta lady: a memoir By Rita Coolidge with Michael Walker