Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton had huge success with their duet Islands in the Stream in 1983. Featuring the pained, sandpapery vocal delivery that would become Rogers’s trademark, in 1969 it reached No 2 in the UK and 6 on the Billboard pop chart. Their most prominent hit was their version of Mel Tillis’s Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town, written from the viewpoint of a paralysed Vietnam veteran. In 1967 Rogers formed the First Edition (which also included New Christy Minstrels songwriter Mike Settle), and they proceeded to notch up seven Top 40 pop hits, including Mickey Newbury’s Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Was In (1967, and later used for a memorable dream sequence in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski). He then played bass in the jazz trio the Bobby Doyle Three before moving to Los Angeles and joining the folk group the New Christy Minstrels.

In 1956 he left school and within two years had scored a solo hit with That Crazy Feeling, which earned him an appearance on the TV show American Bandstand. He attended Jefferson Davis high school, where he formed his first band, a doo-wop group called the Scholars, in which he sang and played guitar.

Altogether he recorded 65 albums and sold more than 165m records.īorn in Houston, Texas, Kenny was the fourth of eight children of Lucille (nee Hester), a nursing assistant, and Edward Rogers, a carpenter, and grew up in the San Felipe Courts housing project. Though his record sales waned in the late 80s, he bounced back in his last years with three successful albums, The Love of God (2011), You Can’t Make Old Friends (2013) and Once Again It’s Christmas (2015). Rogers’s knack for finding a popular song – he was modest about his own writing skills and preferred to pick songs from other writers – was unerring, bringing him huge hits with Don Schlitz’s The Gambler (1978), Lionel Richie’s Lady (1980), and, with Dolly Parton, the Bee Gees’ Islands in the Stream (1983) among many others. And if they do, then it becomes country music.” “If the country audience doesn’t buy it, they’ll kick it out. “I did songs that were not country but were more pop,” he said in 2016. Kenny Rogers, who has died aged 81, was a prolific hit-maker from the late 1960s into the 80s, and with songs such as Lucille, The Gambler and Coward of the County helped to create a bestselling crossover of pop and country material.

Wanda miller rogers ethnicity