Legendary musician Kenny Rogers was a fixture in country and soft rock for decades, touring
constantly, releasing dozens of albums, and even lending his name to a chain of chicken
restaurants.
On March 20th, 2020, Rogers passed away, surrounded by his family.
He was 81 years old.
Kenny Rogers' first taste of success came with his high-school doo-wop group, The Scholars.
The quartet released six singles in the late 1950s, but the group quickly fizzled out,
and Rogers embarked on a solo career for the first time.
He performed his single, "That Crazy Feeling," on American Bandstand as well as a Texas program
called The Larry Kane Show.
That's also where the singer, going by Kenneth Rogers at the time, got his "stage" name.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Rogers recalled,
"As I am going out Larry says, "You know you can't call yourself Kenneth Rogers."
I said, "That's my name!
What would you call me?"
"Kenny Rogers," he said."
Not quite a superstar yet, Rogers then joined a jazz group called the Bobby Doyle Three,
before singing and playing double bass in the popular folk ensemble the New Christy
Minstrels.
After two years, Rogers and three Christy members started a lightly psychedelic pop-rock
group called Kenny Rogers and The First Edition.
They had a huge hit in 1968 with the single "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My
Condition Was In)," which modern audiences might recognize from The Big Lebowski.
Imagine a world without the Eagles.
Without Kenny Rogers, that might have been a reality.
The Gambler himself gave founding Eagles member Don Henley his big break.
In the late '60s, Henley formed a band called Felicity with some friends from his hometown
of Linden, Texas.
One day in 1968, they were in a clothing store in Dallas called The Electric Rocking Horse,
when fate intervened in the form of a bearded stranger who they ran into while shopping.
Henley told CBS Sunday Morning,
"We were buying bell bottom pants and Nehru jackets and stuff.
[Rogers was there] because there was a really beautiful girl working there."
They struck up a conversation and a friendship, and as Rogers told Rolling Stone,
"[I] took them to L.A. and they lived with me for six months."
The band changed their name to Shiloh, and Rogers produced their one and only LP.
And while he was in Los Angeles, Henley met Glenn Frey, and together they joined Linda
Ronstadt's backing band before quitting to start their own group : The Eagles.
Kenny Rogers appeared atop lots of lists — Billboard charts, mostly — but he also claimed to
have been almost as naturally talented and successful at something besides music: tennis.
Rogers began playing the sport in earnest when he was 37 years old and used his vast
resources to quickly improve his game.
We don't have any video footage of that, but we DO have footage of him playing a charity
basketball game against Michael Jordan in 1988.
Anyway, Rogers once told the BBC all about his almost-career in tennis:
"I carried a tennis pro.
I carried a couple of them with me on the road everywhere I went.
I had my own plane, so we just flew from city to city, and we'd get into town and we'd play
the pro and assistant pro at one of the clubs."
And so it went like that for as many as eight hours a day for ten years.
Rogers told Rolling Stone that he, quote,
"developed a national ranking while I was on the road playing with Wimbledon champions."
Did he, though?
He also told the BBC
"I developed a very good doubles game"
"I heard at one time, I thought I saw it, that I was ranked one notch above Bjorn Borg
in the doubles."
...although Borg only ever played in one doubles match.
Rogers also boasted that he had a serve that allowed him to stay competitive, quote, "even
with the pros."
Sounds like the Gambler may have been bluffing a little.
Restaurants attract celebrities with cash to burn.
Eatery co-owners like Jessica Biel and Ty Burrell generally put their money where the
mouths might be, but most celebs don't incorporate their famous names into their establishments.
Unless you're Flava Flav…
"Welcome to FFC, Flav's Fried Chicken!”
...or Kenny Rogers.
He put his name front and center of Kenny Rogers' Roasters, the chain of not-fried chicken
joints marketed with the vaguely risque slogan,
"It's the wood that makes it good."
In 1991, the first Kenny Rogers Roasters opened in Coral Springs, Florida, and within three
years, the company had more than 100 outposts.
While the chain grew to 425 locations, it was bankrupt by 1998 and was soon sold off.
The last Roasters in the U.S., in Ontario, California, shut down in 2011, but the franchise
still does hearty business in Asia, where the chief Roasters franchiser bought the rights
to the company outright in 2008.
As one of the most successful and recognizable stars working in entertainment in the 1980s,
it's not surprising that Kenny Rogers was offered a slew of endorsement deals.
And he rejected almost all of them because they were primarily offers to lend his name
and image to marketing campaigns for less-than-wholesome products.
He told the Chicago Tribune in 1986,
"I've had offers to do commercials for cigarettes, beer, and liquor [...] And while I'm not passing
moral judgment, I turned them down."
But then along came an opportunity he couldn't refuse, either because of the product's noncontroversial
reputation or the insane amount of money he stood to earn.
In 1986, Rogers signed his first endorsement: a five-year contract to appear in advertisements
for Dole products, particularly pineapple juice.
It came about mostly because David Murdock, the CEO of Dole's parent company, Castle & Cooke,
was friends with Rogers.
Murdock explained to the Chicago Tribune:
"I realized it would be a wonderful opportunity if we could get Kenny, but I didn't want to
take advantage of a friend [...] as we got to talking money, I realized how expensive
a friend could be."
So how expensive?
$17 million.
By comparison, Pepsi only paid Michael Jackson $5 million to rep them, and that came just
after Thriller.
Along with fun country songs, Kenny Rogers found his niche singing unabashedly sentimental
love songs for adults of a certain age — "Lady," "You Decorated My Life," and so on.
He was a man who sang that which he knew.
That is to say that Rogers had a complicated romantic history, with five marriages to his
name.
His first, to Janice Gordon in his early 20s, lasted just two years and resulted in a son.
His subsequent marriage, to Jean Rogers, lasted a bit longer, at three years, from 1960-1963.
Number three seemed charming — he was with Margo Anderson from 1964 to 1976 and had two
kids with her.
His longest-lasting and best known marriage came with actress Marianne Gordon, running
from 1977 to 1993.
Rogers' fifth marriage started in 1997.
That's when he married Wanda Miller, mother of twin boys.
It didn't get off on the best foot, however.
There was 28-year age gap between Rogers and Miller, which freaked out Miller's parents.
"Her mom is two years younger than me.
She said, 'I want you to know, I don't appreciate what you're doing with my daughter.
And I said, 'you know what?
I don't think I would either."
But in the end, he won them over with that Kenny Rogers charm.
He boasted later in the same Fox Entertainment interview, "Now they're my best friends."
By the late 1980s, the once-solidly-country Kenny Rogers had established himself as the
king of the schmaltzy soft rock love ballad.
It's impossible to count how many wedding DJs, anniversary party DJs, and adult contemporary
radio DJs have spun Rogers' "She Believes in Me" and "Through the Years."
But Bette Midler could certainly have challenged Rogers for the title of soft rock royalty
based solely on the enduring popularity of "Wind Beneath My Wings."
That BFF anthem definitely sounds like a Kenny Rogers song ... and it almost was.
In 2012, Rogers told Stuff.com that the Beaches soundtrack cut was offered to him, but he
declined the chance to make it his own.
He explained:
"I heard it, and something about it didn't sit right with me.
I turned it down.
Then I heard it when Bette did it and I went 'Wow, can't believe I turned that down.'"
Donald Trump didn't earn the endorsement of all that many entertainment industry figures
during his 2016 presidential campaign, so Kenny Rogers made headlines in December 2015
when he tacitly endorsed Trump in the run-up to the Republican primaries, telling The Guardian,
"I really like him.
I think his problem is that he says what everyone wants to hear, but he doesn't say it well.
I love what he says, I have to admit.
He can be president and not owe anybody anything; he's one of the few people [who] has the money
to do it, and has the guts to do it."
While Trump is a polarizing figure, it was probably far riskier for Rogers to compare
him to Dolly Parton, someone beloved by most everyone.
Rogers and Parton are close friends, notably collaborating on the 1983 hit "Islands in
the Stream".
In 2015, Rogers performed at Dollywood and discussed his eminently quotable host, saying,
"She has no filter.
If it goes in her mind, it comes out of her mouth.
And that's what makes her special.
She has become the Donald Trump of country music."
"I love her.
I love her for that.
You never know what she’s going to say, but it always comes from a place of love."
In response, Parton quipped to Rolling Stone, quote, "Me and Donald kind of have the same
hair."
Kenny Rogers was a professional musician of some sort for 60 years, which means he must
have had scores of drunken tales of debauchery ... right?
In 2012, Rogers released his memoir Luck or Something Like It, in which he recounted a
childhood made stressful and unpredictable by a father who drank too much.
He told Reuters,
"He was an alcoholic, but during that time, post-World War II, a lot of people were unemployed
and ending up drinking.
He couldn't really support his family, and I think it just broke him down.
[As a result] I never drank in my life.
I saw it destroy him and saw it destroy other people I work with, so I made a conscious
decision about this."
But Rogers wasn't exactly straight edge.
He admitted on Anderson Live that while he didn't do a lot of drugs, he did do some.
He got turned off after embarrassing himself at a concert, recalling,
"I smoked pot one night, and I decided to talk on stage.
I was having the time of my life, and I came off the stage and the guys in the band said,
'What were you talking about when you went off on this thing about the zoo?'"
Most major musicians don't retire — they either fade into the obscurity of the casino
and county fair circuit, or die, or pretend to retire and then launch a "comeback" tour.
But unfortunately for fans of Kenny Rogers and his deep-throated country pop, the singer
had to call it quits in late 2017.
He explained to Fox News:
“To get out there, it's hard, hard work.
And I can't do it like I used to do it.
And I swore that I'd do this until I started embarrassing myself.”
And so, in October 2017, the 79-year-old played his last concert in Nashville.
"All In for the Gambler" featured a number of special guests, including Don Henley, Lionel
Richie, and Dolly Parton, who sang "Islands in the Stream" with Rogers and then "I Will
Always Love You" for Rogers.
After that, Rogers embarked on a two-year "Gambler's Last Deal" tour, although he had
to cancel the final dates due to health issues.
He really quit, too — proving he knew when to lay down the cards.
"That's always been kind of a rub with me when people retire 10 times," he said.
"I'm going out because I need to go out."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite musicians are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.