LOS ANGELES (NYTIMES, AFP) – Kenny Rogers, a prolific singer who played a major role in expanding the audience for country music in the 1970s and 80s, died on Friday (March 20) at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He was 81.
“Rogers passed away peacefully at home from natural causes under the care of hospice and surrounded by his family,” his family said in a statement, adding that they were planning a small private service “out of concern for the national Covid-19 emergency”.
Kenny Rogers left an indelible mark on the history of American music.
“His songs have endeared music lovers and touched the lives of millions around the world,” said the statement posted by his representative 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.”
“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, Dont 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, Id 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 Dont Fall In Love With A Dreamer, a 1980 duet with pop singer Kim Carnes, and Weve Got Tonight, a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well.
Rogers was particularly fond of singing the harmony part on vocal collaborations. In a 2013 episode of the television programme The Big Interview With Dan Rather, he explained that harmonies had fascinated him ever since he first heard his older sister Geraldine singing them in church.
“Id never heard harmony before, and I said, What are you singing?” he recalled. “She said, Well, thats called harmony, where you dont sing the melody, but you sing something that sounds good with the melody. And I thought, Oh, Id like to do that.”
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.
He later experimented with pop psychedelia on the First Editions 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.
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.
More a fan favourite than a critics darling, Rogers was something of a late bloomer in country music; his career as a solo artist did not gain traction until after his breakthrough single, Lucille, was released by United Artists in 1977. He was 38 at the time.
“The executives at United Artists Records thought I was too old, creeping up on 40, and too pop to have much success in country,” Rogers wrote of his recording career before Lucille, a cheating song complicated by the narrators conscience-haunted change of heart, in his 2012 memoir, Luck Or Something Like It. Lucille became his first No. 1 country hit and reached the pop Top 10 as well.
“Once we made the story song a viable art form for me, the songs just poured in,” he added, alluding to subsequent hits like Coward Of The County and The Gambler. “Every songwriter with a story song sent it to me.”
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 citys 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 wasnt 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.
LOS ANGELES (NYTIMES, AFP) – Kenny Rogers, a prolific singer who played a major role in expanding the audience for country music in the 1970s and 80s, died on Friday (March 20) at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He was 81.
“Rogers passed away peacefully at home from natural causes under the care of hospice and surrounded by his family,” his family said in a statement, adding that they were planning a small private service “out of concern for the national Covid-19 emergency”.
Kenny Rogers left an indelible mark on the history of American music.
“His songs have endeared music lovers and touched the lives of millions around the world,” said the statement posted by his representative 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.”
“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, Dont 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, Id 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 Dont Fall In Love With A Dreamer, a 1980 duet with pop singer Kim Carnes, and Weve Got Tonight, a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well.
Rogers was particularly fond of singing the harmony part on vocal collaborations. In a 2013 episode of the television programme The Big Interview With Dan Rather, he explained that harmonies had fascinated him ever since he first heard his older sister Geraldine singing them in church.
“Id never heard harmony before, and I said, What are you singing?” he recalled. “She said, Well, thats called harmony, where you dont sing the melody, but you sing something that sounds good with the melody. And I thought, Oh, Id like to do that.”
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.
He later experimented with pop psychedelia on the First Editions 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.
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.
More a fan favourite than a critics darling, Rogers was something of a late bloomer in country music; his career as a solo artist did not gain traction until after his breakthrough single, Lucille, was released by United Artists in 1977. He was 38 at the time.
“The executives at United Artists Records thought I was too old, creeping up on 40, and too pop to have much success in country,” Rogers wrote of his recording career before Lucille, a cheating song complicated by the narrators conscience-haunted change of heart, in his 2012 memoir, Luck Or Something Like It. Lucille became his first No. 1 country hit and reached the pop Top 10 as well.
“Once we made the story song a viable art form for me, the songs just poured in,” he added, alluding to subsequent hits like Coward Of The County and The Gambler. “Every songwriter with a story song sent it to me.”
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 citys 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 wasnt 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.
