{"id":249424,"date":"2020-03-21T06:45:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-21T10:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=249424"},"modified":"2020-03-21T06:45:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T10:45:28","slug":"singer-actor-the-gambler-kenny-rogers-dies-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/03\/21\/singer-actor-the-gambler-kenny-rogers-dies-at-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Singer, actor, ‘The Gambler’: Kenny Rogers dies at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
He died at home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, representative Keith Hagan told The Associated Press. He was under hospice care and died of natural causes, Hagan said. (File photo<\/a> by Eva Rinaldi\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actor-singer Kenny Rogers, the smooth, Grammy-winning balladeer who spanned jazz, folk, country and pop with such hits as \u201cLucille,\u201d \u201cLady\u201d and \u201cIslands in the Stream\u201d and embraced his persona as \u201cThe Gambler\u201d on record and on TV died Friday night. He was 81.<\/p>\n

He died at home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, representative Keith Hagan told The Associated Press. He was under hospice care and died of natural causes, Hagan said.<\/p>\n

The Houston-born performer with the husky voice and silver beard sold tens of millions of records, won three Grammys and was the star of TV movies based on \u201cThe Gambler\u201d and other songs, making him a superstar in the `70s and ’80s. Rogers thrived for some 60 years before retired from touring in 2017 at age 79. Despite his crossover success, he always preferred to be thought of as a country singer.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou either do what everyone else is doing and you do it better, or you do what no one else is doing and you don’t invite comparison,\u201d Rogers told The Associated Press in 2015. \u201cAnd I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie or Waylon at what they did. So I found something that I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them. And I think people thought it was my desire to change country music. But that was never my issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

A true rags-to-riches story, Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights with seven siblings. As a 20-year-old, he had a gold single called \u201cThat Crazy Feeling,\u201d under the name Kenneth Rogers, but when that early success stalled, he joined a jazz group, the Bobby Doyle Trio, as a standup bass player.<\/p>\n

But his breakthrough came when he was asked to join the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group, in 1966. The band reformed as First Edition and scored a pop hit with the psychedelic song, \u201cJust Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).\u201d Rogers and First Edition mixed country-rock and folk on songs like \u201cRuby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,\u201d a story of a Vietnam veteran begging his girlfriend to stay.<\/p>\n

After the group broke up in 1974, Rogers started his solo career and found a big hit with the sad country ballad \u201cLucille,\u201d in 1977, which crossed over to the pop charts and earned Rogers his first Grammy. Suddenly the star, Rogers added hit after hit for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gambler,\u201d the Grammy-winning story song penned by Don Schlitz, came out in 1978 and became his signature song with a signature refrain: \u201cYou gotta know when to hold `em, know when to fold ’em.\u201d The song spawned a hit TV movie of the same name and several more sequels featuring Rogers as professional gambler Brady Hawkes, and led to a lengthy side career for Rogers as a TV actor and host of several TV specials.<\/p>\n

Other hits included \u201cYou Decorated My Life,\u201d \u201cEvery Time Two Fools Collide\u201d with Dottie West, \u201cDon’t Fall In Love with a Dreamer\u201d with Kim Carnes, and \u201cCoward of the County.\u201d One of his biggest successes was \u201cLady,\u201d written by Lionel Richie, a chart topper for six weeks straight in 1980. Richie said in a 2017 interview with the AP that he often didn’t finish songs until he had already pitched them, which was the case for \u201cLady.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning, the song was called, `Baby,\u201d’ Richie said. \u201cAnd because when I first sat with him, for the first 30 minutes, all he talked about was he just got married to a real lady. A country guy like him is married to a lady. So, he said, `By the way, what’s the name of the song?\u201d’ Richie replies: \u201cLady.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, Rogers worked often with female duet partners, most memorably, Dolly Parton. The two were paired at the suggestion of the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, who wrote \u201cIslands in the Stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBarry was producing an album on me and he gave me this song,\u201d Rogers told the AP in 2017. \u201cAnd I went and learned it and went into the studio and sang it for four days. And I finally looked at him and said, `Barry, I don’t even like this song anymore.’ And he said, `You know what we need? We need Dolly Parton.’ I thought, `Man, that guy is a visionary.\u201d’<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, Parton was actually in the same recording studio in Los Angeles when the idea came up.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the moment she marched into that room, that song never sounded the same,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cIt took on a whole new spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two singers toured together, including in Australia and New Zealand in 1984 and 1987, and were featured in a HBO concert special. Over the years the two would continue to record together, including their last duet, \u201cYou Can’t Make Old Friends,\u201d which was released in 2013. Parton reprised \u201cIslands in the Stream\u201d with Rogers during his all-star retirement concert held in Nashville in October 2017.<\/p>\n

Rogers invested his time and money in a lot of other endeavours over his career, including a passion for photography that led to several books, as well as an autobiography, \u201cMaking It With Music.\u201d He had a chain of restaurants called \u201cKenny Rogers Roasters,\u201d and was a partner behind a riverboat in Branson, Missouri. He was also involved in numerous charitable causes, among them the Red Cross and MusiCares, and was part of the all-star \u201cWe are the World\u201d recording for famine relief.<\/p>\n

By the ’90s, his ability to chart hits had waned, although he still remained a popular live entertainer with regular touring. Still he was an inventive businessman and never stopped trying to find his way back onto the charts.<\/p>\n

At the age of 61, Rogers had a brief comeback on the country charts in 2000 with a hit song \u201cBuy Me A Rose,\u201d thanks to his other favourite medium, television. Producers of the series \u201cTouched By An Angel\u201d wanted him to appear in an episode, and one of his managers suggested the episode be based on his latest single. That cross-promotional event earned him his first No. 1 country song in 13 years.<\/p>\n

Rogers is survived by his wife, Wanda, and his sons Justin, Jordan, Chris and Kenny Jr., as well as two brothers, a sister and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, his representative said. The family is planning a private service \u201cout of concern for the national COVID-19 emergency,\u201d a statement posted early Saturday read. A public memorial will be held at a later date.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press journalist Mallika Sen contributed from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor-singer Kenny Rogers, the smooth, Grammy-winning balladeer who spanned jazz, folk, country and pop with such hits as \u201cLucille,\u201d \u201cLady\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":249425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106,54365],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","category-instagram","mauthors-kristin-m-hall","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249426,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249424\/revisions\/249426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}