![]() Rogers wrote of his recording career before “Lucille,” a cheating song complicated by the narrator’s conscience-haunted change of heart, in his 2012 memoir, “Luck or Something Like It.” “Lucille” became his first No. “The executives at United Artists Records thought I was too old, creeping up on 40, and too pop to have much success in country,” Mr. 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. ![]() More a fan favorite than a critics’ darling, Mr. He became a member of the folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels in the mid-’60s. After graduating from high school, he played upright bass in the Bobby Doyle Three, a well-regarded jazz trio. Rogers came by his wide-ranging musical sensibilities naturally. Both the rapper Wyclef Jean and the neo-soul singer Anthony Hamilton have used passages from his music in their work. Rogers also recorded with R&B artists like James Ingram and Gladys Knight. “She said, ‘Well, that’s called harmony, where you don’t sing the melody, but you sing something that sounds good with the melody.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I’d like to do that.’” “I’d never heard harmony before, and I said, ‘What are you singing?’” he recalled. In a 2013 episode of the television program “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. ![]() Rogers was particularly fond of singing the harmony part on vocal collaborations. Several of them, including “Don’t Fall in Love With a Dreamer,” a 1980 duet with the pop singer Kim Carnes, and “We’ve Got Tonight,” a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with the Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well. Rogers’s repertoire, accounting for more than a dozen country hits, including eight No. Written by Mel Tillis, the song is about a veteran, left impotent and in a wheelchair after being wounded in war, who must endure the agony of watching his wife leave the house every night to meet other men.ĭuo recordings were a prominent part of Mr. Rogers’s command as an interpreter of narrative ballads. ![]() ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town’ was about a guy who came home from war.” “‘Coward of the County’ was about a rape. “‘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. The other is story songs that have social significance. “One is ballads that say what every man would like to say and every woman would like to hear. “All the songs I record fall into one of two categories, as a rule,” he said in a 2012 interview with NPR. Rogers’s 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.” 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 had placed more than 50 singles in the country Top 40, of which 20 also appeared in the pop Top 40. 1 on the pop chart as well.īy the time he stopped performing, Mr. 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. Rogers sold well over 100 million records in a career that spanned seven decades. Singing in a husky voice that exuded sincerity and warmth, Mr. Rogers retired from performing for health reasons in 2018. Hagan did not specify the cause but said Mr. His death was announced by his publicist, Keith Hagan. 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 at his home in Sandy Springs, Ga. ![]()
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