{"id":923,"date":"2016-04-23T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=923"},"modified":"2017-01-24T08:35:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:35:17","slug":"best-possible-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/best-possible-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Best of All Possible Worlds\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UMKuZwGuE2o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I have no idea how I ended up with a copy of Kris Kristofferson&#8217;s first album &#8212; I was buying hardly any country, or rock, or pop at that point &#8212; but however it came into my hands, I was instantly hooked. The writing was like nothing I&#8217;d ever heard: a perfect combination of hip, smart, soulful, literary, and simple as a great country song<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-930\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kristofferson-lp.jpg?resize=250%2C251\" alt=\"kristofferson lp\" width=\"250\" height=\"251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kristofferson-lp.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kristofferson-lp.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>. It matched Kris&#8217;s unique background: Vietnam, Oxford University, flying helicopters to oil rigs, emptying ashtrays at Columbia&#8217;s Nashville studio. But I didn&#8217;t know that at the time; I just knew how much I loved his writing. In retrospect some of the songs feel a little over-romantic &#8212; in a 19th century literary sense &#8212; but I was the right age for that, and others have held up as well as any songs I know.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll probably get to &#8220;Me and Bobby McGee&#8221; before this project is over, because overdone as it is, it&#8217;s a great song; and I don&#8217;t think I can write about busking in Norway without doing &#8220;Help Me Make It Through the Night&#8221;; and I don&#8217;t know many better phrases than &#8220;Sunday Morning Comin&#8217; Down,&#8221; and have a soft spot for &#8220;Just the Other Side of Nowhere&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But my favorite to play and sing was always &#8220;Best of All Possible Worlds,&#8221; because it came along just when I was getting into Jim Kweskin and Willie McTell and all those guys who played rural ragtime circle-of-fifths tunes, and I figured out that a riff from McTell&#8217;s &#8220;Kill It, Kid&#8221; would fit perfectly with Kristofferson&#8217;s song. Plus, I never heard anyone else do this one, unlike all the other Kristofferson songs I liked, which were mostly covered to death.<\/p>\n<p>Also, obviously, I love the story, and the wry humor:<\/p>\n<p><em>They finally came and told me they were gonna set me free,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> And that I&#8217;d be leaving town if I knew what was good for me.<\/em><br \/>\n<em> I said, &#8220;It&#8217;s nice to learn that everybody&#8217;s so concerned about my health.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was lucky enough to meet Kris a couple of times, and interview him, and he was one of the most likeable people in the music business. He carried a band made up of songwriters who enjoyed hanging out and playing together, including Billy Swan and Donnie Fritts, and I once came back to the dressing room and asked Swan, <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-931 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/KristoffersonThirdWorldWarrior.jpg?resize=240%2C240\" alt=\"KristoffersonThirdWorldWarrior\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" \/>who was acting as the bandleader, if he had a set list for the show I&#8217;d just heard, and behind me Kris quietly said, &#8220;You got a pen?&#8221; And then, while his band drank beer and relaxed, he wrote out the set for me. That may not sound like much, but headliners don&#8217;t typically act that way &#8212; not to mention headliners who are also movie stars. But he has always been atypical, in a lot of ways: that night, he&#8217;d done a country set about the Nicaraguan revolution, including a moment when he named Sandino, Che Guevara, and other Latin American revolutionary heroes, and the bandmembers pumped fists in the air and yelled &#8220;<em>\u00a1Presente!<\/em>&#8221; after each name. (The album was called <em>Third World Warrior<\/em>. It wasn&#8217;t a great record, but it was heartfelt and a very unusual project to be touring around county fairs in middle America in 1990.)<\/p>\n<p>It was Kris&#8217;s first album, though, and his follow-up, <em>The Silver-Tongued Devil<\/em>, that changed the course of country music, and if anyone reading this hasn&#8217;t heard either, or both, you&#8217;ve got a treat in store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have no idea how I ended up with a copy of Kris Kristofferson&#8217;s first album &#8212; I was buying hardly any country, or rock, or pop at that point &#8212; but however it came into my hands, I was instantly hooked. The writing was like nothing I&#8217;d ever heard: a perfect combination of hip, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/best-possible-worlds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A brilliantly wry drinking and jail song from Kris Kristofferson&#039;s first album, ornamented with a ragtime blues guitar lick from Willie McTell.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/best-possible-worlds\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A brilliantly wry drinking and jail song from Kris Kristofferson&#039;s first album, ornamented with a ragtime blues guitar lick from Willie McTell.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/best-possible-worlds\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-04-23T11:00:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-01-24T13:35:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kristofferson-lp.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson)\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-04-23T11:00:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-01-24T13:35:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":619,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/04\\\/kristofferson-lp.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/best-possible-worlds\\\/\",\"name\":\"Best of All Possible Worlds (Kris Kristofferson) - 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It may have taken an hour or so, just playing and seeing what felt right, and that was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Guy-Clark-old-no1-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3242,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/tequila-sheila\/","url_meta":{"origin":923,"position":1},"title":"Tequila Sheila (Shel Silverstein\/Bobby Bare)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"An absurd western outlaw ballad with a trick ending, from the nimble pen of Shel Silverstein, thanks to Bobby Bare. I've already paid tribute to Shel's work in a previous post, so now on to Mr. Bare... Honestly, I'm not all that wild about Bare's singing--he's a solid country singer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Bobby-Bare-Down-Dirty-LP-300x298.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1617,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kill-it-kid\/","url_meta":{"origin":923,"position":2},"title":"Kill It, Kid (Blind Willie McTell)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Willie McTell was one of the few early blues artists who managed to record in every decade from the 1920s through the 1950s. This song is from a session he did for the embryonic Atlantic Records in 1949, well before it became a powerhouse jazz and R&B label. In a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"mctell lp cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/mctell-lp-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/johnny-be-fair\/","url_meta":{"origin":923,"position":3},"title":"Johnny Be Fair (Buffy Sainte-Marie)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another by Buffy Sainte-Marie, though, like a lot of people, I thought it was an old folk song that I just happened to learn from her recording. The story is certainly old, and I also do a Caribbean version called \"Shame and Scandal in the Family,\" but this version doesn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"buffy_sainte_marie02","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/buffy_sainte_marie02-300x213.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":124,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/zebra-dun\/","url_meta":{"origin":923,"position":4},"title":"Zebra Dun (Jack Thorpe)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"February 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another cowboy song from Cisco Houston, which I've kept singing pretty regularly as a kind of apologia pro vita mia. Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the child of two professors...","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/thorpsongs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1674,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wake-little-susie\/","url_meta":{"origin":923,"position":5},"title":"Wake Up, Little Susie (Everlys and Bryants)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 29, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When I first heard the Everly Brothers, I didn't know what to make of them. They didn't sound exactly like doo-wop, or like country, or like rock 'n' roll. In retrospect, I see them in the long tradition of country brother duets, following the Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"2-3 Everly Brothers","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/2-3-Everly-Brothers-299x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}