Kenny Rogers, a prolific singer who played a major role in expanding the audience for country music in the 1970s and ’80s, died Friday at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He was 81.
Rogers had been in hospice care and died of natural causes, said his publicist, Keith Hagan.
Singing in a husky voice that exuded sincerity and warmth, Rogers sold well over 100 million records in a career that spanned seven decades. He had 21 No. 1 country hits, including two — “Lady,” written and produced by Lionel Richie, and “Islands in the Stream,” composed by the Bee Gees and performed with Dolly Parton — that reached No. 1 on the pop chart as well.
By the time he retired from performing for health reasons in 2018, Rogers had placed more than 50 singles in the country Top 40, of which 20 also appeared in the pop Top 40. Long before the ascendancy of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain in the 1990s, he was among the first country artists to sell out arenas.
Rogers’ popularity stemmed partly from his genial persona and rugged good looks but also from his ability to inhabit his material, which, he often said, was of two main types: love songs like “You Decorated My Life” and narrative ballads like “The Gambler” and “Lucille.”
“All the songs I record fall into one of two categories, as a rule,” he said in a 2012 interview with NPR. “One is ballads that say what every man would like to say and every woman would like to hear. The other is story songs that have social significance.
‘Ruby, don’t take your love to town’
‘Reuben James’ was about a black man who raised a white child,” he continued, referring to a 1969 song that was a Top 40 hit for his group Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. “‘Coward of the County’ was about a rape. ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town’ was about a guy who came home from war.”
“Ruby” in particular revealed Rogers’ command as an interpreter of narrative ballads. Written by Mel Tillis, the song is about a veteran, left impotent and bound to a wheelchair by the Vietnam War, who must endure the agony of watching his wife leave the house every night to meet other men.
“And if I could move, I’d get my gun and put her in the ground,” Rogers broods as the record ends.
Duo recordings were a prominent part of Rogers’ repertoire, accounting for more than a dozen country hits, including eight No. 1 records. Several of them, including “Don’t Fall in Love With a Dreamer,” a 1980 duet with pop singer Kim Carnes, and “We’ve Got Tonight,” a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well.
Rogers also recorded with R&B artists like James Ingram and Gladys Knight. Both rapper Wyclef Jean and neo-soul singer Anthony Hamilton have used passages from his music in their work.
Rogers came by his wide-ranging musical sensibilities naturally. After graduating from high school, he played upright bass in the Bobby Doyle Three, a well-regarded jazz trio. He became a member of the folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels in the mid-’60s.
'Just dropped in…'
He later experimented with pop psychedelia on the First Edition’s 1967 single “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” a Top 10 pop hit written by Mickey Newbury, with whom Rogers attended high school. The song was famously used by the Coen Brothers for a much talked of dream sequence in their film, The Big Lebowski.
Most of Rogers’ material was written by others. Two notable exceptions were “Sweet Music Man,” a Top 10 country single in 1977 written solely by Rogers, and “Love or Something Like It,” a No. 1 country hit the next year, which he wrote with his longtime keyboardist, Steve Glassmeyer.
Rogers also had an acting career, starring in a series of TV movies based on his signature song, “The Gambler,” and in the 1982 feature film “Six Pack.”
He was also an avid photographer. He published two volumes of his work: “Kenny Rogers’ America” (1986), an assortment of photos of national landmarks and other places of interest, and “Your Friends and Mine” (1987), a collection of portraits of fellow celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.
Music an early refuge
Kenneth Donald Rogers was born Aug. 21, 1938, in Houston. The fourth of eight children, he grew up in San Felipe Courts, a public housing development in the city’s Fourth Ward.
His father, Edward Floyd Rogers, was a carpenter and amateur musician who struggled with alcohol. His mother, Lucille (Hester) Rogers, had only a third-grade education but held the family together, making ends meet by cleaning offices and working in a hospital.
Music was a refuge early on. “My dad wasn’t in the business, but he played fiddle,” Rogers recalled in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone. “All of his brothers and sisters played some instrument, so we used to get in the cab of a pickup truck and ride up to Apple Springs, Texas, where all my aunts and uncles would get on the front porch and play music.
“I used to sing in the church choir and at school,” he continued, “but my interest actually started when I was 12 years old and went to see Ray Charles in concert.
Ray Charles: an early inspiration Pinterest/elhurgador.blogspot.com
“It was like an epiphany. People laughed at everything Ray said, they clapped for everything he sang. I thought, ‘Boy, who wouldn’t want to do that?’ I didn’t even know I could sing at the time. I just loved the honesty of his music.”
(More than three decades later, Rogers and Charles would be among the featured vocalists on the Grammy-winning all-star benefit recording “We Are the World.”)
Rogers received many accolades during his career, among them three Grammy Awards and recognition for lifetime achievement from the Country Music Association. In 2013 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Rogers is survived by Wanda Miller, his wife of 22 years, and the couple’s twin sons, Justin and Jordan.