He wanted to be in our group, The Scholars. On the subject of songwriting, didn’t you actually go to high school in Houston with Mickey Newbury, writer of Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)? Coward Of The County? Every man there sings it.”
I mean, I watch people, what they sing along with. I’ve always felt that the love songs were for the women and the story-songs were for the men. And I think that’s where my strength has been.”ĭid you ever feel like those two kinds of songs were in conflict with each other?
And how many people sing about rape? It’s a great story. Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town – a Vietnam War vet comes back, and his wife’s having an affair.
And then the other section are story-songs that have social significance: Reuben James, about a black man who raised a white child. If you listen through the years, She Believes In Me, You Decorated My Life, Buy Me A Rose, Lady. One is ballads that say what every man would like to say and every women would like to hear. “So I looked for two different types of music. He said, ‘This guy can sell songs.’ Because I’m a storyteller, first and foremost. , ‘Okay, that’ll work.’ And then from there, when I came to Nashville, Larry Butler believed in me. (Image credit: Bettmann/CORBIS) On song appealĪbove: Rogers (top) with The First Edition and BB King, 1972.Īnd you got the denim Tony Alamo outfit that’s in the exhibit. So I went and I grew my hair, grew a beard, put an earring in my ear, put on some sunglasses.” So they didn’t want me, because I was too old. Because when I went with The First Edition, I was the oldest one in that group. “You know, I’ve never thought in terms of that. How likely or unlikely did it seem to you at the time that your solo country bid would work? Because I remember Larry Butler went to war the president of the record company. Weren’t you approaching 40 when you launched your solo career? But it’s really one of the greatest second-act stories in popular music. So many of the interviews you’ve done have begun with interviewers quoting back to you how many albums you’ve sold, lumping everything together as though there was no difference between your era fronting The First Edition and your decades as a solo artist. (For more information on the Kenny Rogers: Through The Years exhibit, visit the website of the Country Music Hall Of Fame And Museum.) The tangible items proved a good jumping off point for discussing Rogers’ career, long and varied as it’s been.
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There was rather dignified western attire he wore in the TV movie role of The Gambler, the sheet music to some of his singles, a framed award as long as a dinner table recognizing 12 times platinum sales of his Greatest Hits album, a wooden tambourine like those he tosses out during shows, more than one concert poster and such period-embodying stage clothes as a bejeweled, denim outfit from Tony Alamo of Nashville that he wore with the psychedelic folk-rock group The First Edition. The day that MusicRadar sat down with the Houston-bred singer at the museum, an array of artifacts awaited display in the gallery space. After publishing a memoir and being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Rogers has just become the subject of an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Kenny Rogers: Through the Years. The past few years have also seen him release a worthy, new collection of sentimental tunes, You Can’t Make Old Friends, and win over the millennial crowds at Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, along with the sort of mile-marker moments you’d be more prone to expect from a septuagenarian superstar. GEICO, the car insurance company, signed him up for a television spot in which he annoys fellow poker players by singing his signature gambling song under his breath. These days, Kenny Rogers is in the advertising business. Jr/ZUMA Press/Corbis) Kenny Rogers looks back on his illustrious career in music