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That cross-promotional event earned him his first number one country song in 13 years.Grammy Award winning musician, singer and songwriter, Kenny Rogers had scored over 120 hit singles and hadtopped the country and pop charts for an unparalleled 200 individual weeks.
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Producers of the series Touched By An Angel wanted him to appear in an episode, and one of his managers suggested the episode be based on his latest single. Still he was an inventive businessman and never stopped trying to find his way back on to the charts.Īt the age of 61, Rogers had a brief comeback on the country charts in 2000 with a hit song Buy Me A Rose, thanks to his other favourite medium, television. He was also involved in numerous charitable causes, among them the Red Cross and MusicCares, and was part of the all-star We Are The World recording for famine relief.īy the 90s, his ability to chart hits had waned, although he still remained a popular live entertainer with regular touring. He had a chain of restaurants called Kenny Rogers Roasters, and was a partner behind a riverboat in Branson, Missouri. 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, Making It With Music. Parton reprised Islands In The Stream with Rogers during his all-star retirement concert in Nashville in October 2017.
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Over the years the two would continue to record together, including their last duet, You Can’t Make Old Friends, which was released in 2013.Īlso in 2013, Rogers played the legends slot at the Glastonbury Festival. The two singers toured together, including in Australia and New Zealand in 19, and were featured in a HBO concert special. “From the moment she marched into that room, that song never sounded the same,” Rogers said. One of Rogers’s most memorable musical partnerships was with Dolly Parton (PA) 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.’”Ĭoincidentally, Parton was in the same recording studio in Los Angeles when the idea came up. “And I went and learned it and went into the studio and sang it for four days. “Barry was producing an album on me and he gave me this song,” Rogers said in 2017. The two were paired at the suggestion of Bee Gee Barry Gibb, who wrote Islands In The Stream. Over the years, Rogers worked often with female duet partners, most memorably Dolly Parton. One of his biggest successes was Lady, written by Lionel Richie, a chart topper for six weeks in a row in 1980. Other hits included You Decorated My Life, Every Time Two Fools Collide with Dottie West, Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer with Kim Carnes, and Coward Of The County.
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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 a host of several television specials. The Gambler, the Grammy-winning story song penned by Don Schlitz, came out in 1978 and became his signature song with a signature refrain: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ’em.” Rogers poses with his star on the Music City Walk of Fame in Nashville in 2017 (Mark Humphrey/AP) Suddenly the star, Rogers added hit after hit for more than a decade. Rogers and First Edition mixed country-rock and folk on songs like Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town – a story of a Vietnam veteran begging his girlfriend to stay.Īfter the group broke up in 1974, Rogers started his solo career and secured a huge hit with the sad country ballad Lucille, in 1977, which crossed over to the pop charts and earned Rogers his first Grammy. The band reformed as First Edition and scored a pop hit with the psychedelic song Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In). His breakthrough came when he was asked to join the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group, in 1966. But that was never my issue.”Ī true rags-to-riches story, Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights, Texas, with seven siblings.Īs a 20-year-old, he had a gold single called That Crazy Feeling under the name Kenneth Rogers, but when that early success stalled, he joined a jazz group, the Bobby Doyle Trio, as a stand-up bass player. And I think people thought it was my desire to change country music. So I found something that I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them. “And I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie or Waylon at what they did.
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Rogers thanks the audience at a ceremony in 2013 to induct him into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville (Mark Zaleski/AP)