Tag: Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

I first heard Kristofferson as a kid with Why Me on the radio during the seventies. I also remember him on SNL with his then-wife Rita Coolidge. You could tell Kris had been having some fun but it sounded good. Then I found Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee and I found out that Kris wrote that song…I became a fan. Plus he was one of the Outlaws in country music that I really liked. 

In the sixties, Kris was working as a janitor in Nashville while living in a run-down tenant house. He was also a janitor at Columbia Records at the same time. This might seem normal for a songwriter who was trying to make a mark but the man had something else as well. He was a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford University earning a master’s degree in English language. He also served as a captain in the U.S. Army, where he became a helicopter pilot, in addition to having completed U.S. Army Ranger School. The guy was highly talented and very smart.

He befriended Johnny’s wife, June Carter. June liked Kristofferson, and would often sneak demo tapes of his songs in her purse to bring home to Johnny. At night, she’d play the tapes for him in their bedroom above Old Hickory Lake in Tennessee. Every night Cash would listen and throw them out the bedroom window into the lake below. 

There are many stories about how Johnny got the song…but this is the version that Johnny told. At the time, Kristofferson was also working part-time as a helicopter pilot for the Army Reserve. On a routine flight training mission, Kristofferson veered off his course and headed for Cash’s home. After landing the chopper on Cash’s lawn, he walked up to the home with the demo of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in hand. Cash said he heard the chopper land and walked out to find Kristofferson walking up to him.

“As I approached, out stepped Kris Kristofferson, with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other,” Cash said. “I stopped, dumbfounded. He grabbed my hand, put the tape in it, grinned and got back into the helicopter and was gone, a bit wobbly, but almost straight up, then out high above the lake where all his songs lay on the bottom. He disappeared through the clouds. I looked at the tape of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Me And Bobby McGee.”

The first version of this song was not by Johnny Cash. Ray Stevens did the first version of the song. Ray’s version peaked at #55 on the Country Charts in 1969. Johnny Cash did the most successful version releasing it in 1970. The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts, #1 on the Canada Country Charts, and #30 in Canada on the RPM charts. 

Kris passed away on September 28, 2024. 

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’Down

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast,
Wasn’t bad so I had one more, for dessert
Then I fumbled through my closet,
For my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt
And I shaved my face and combed my hair,
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I’d smoked my brain the night before on cigarettes and songs
That I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first, and watched a small kid cussin’ at a can
That he was kickin’
Then I crossed the empty street and caught the Sunday smell
Of someone fryin’chickin
And it took me back to somethin’ that I had lost somehow,
Somewhere along the way

[Chorus]
On the Sunday morning sidewalk, wishin’ Lord that I was stoned
Cause there is something in a Sunday, makes a body feel alone
And there is nothing short of die’n, half a lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday morning coming down

In the park I saw a daddy,
With ‘w(?)’ laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to a song that they were singin’
Then I headed back for home and somewhere far away
A lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyons like the disappearing dreams
Of yesterday

[Chorus]
On the Sunday morning sidewalk, wishing Lord that I was stoned
Cause there is something in a Sunday, make a body feel alone
And there is nothing short of die’n, half a lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday morning coming do