Kenny Rogers

Kenneth Donald Rogers entered country music with a broad musical background. Growing up in public housing in Houston, he was exposed to R&B, pop, and jazz as well as country. His first professional group was a late-1950s vocal act called the Scholars, which had local hits in Houston. "That Crazy Feeling, a 1958 solo hit on Carlton Records, earned him an appearance on American Bandstand. During the early 1960s Rogers played bass, and occasionally sang, in a Houston jazz trio. Membership in the New Christy Minstrels folk group spurred the founding of the First Edition, in which Rogers and other former Minstrels mixed folk, rock, and country sounds. The new group went #5 pop in 1967 with Mickey Newbury's psychedelic "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" and gained several additional pop hits on Reprise Records. After the group's breakup in 1974, producer-executive Larry Butler signed Rogers to United Artists Records, on which he had modest hits until the stunning success of the mournfully catchy, Grammy-winning "Lucille" (#1 country, #5 pop) in 1977. Already a veteran TV performer, Rogers gained further exposure through acting in made-for television movies, including a series of five treatments of "The Gambler." His hit "Love the World Away" was a theme song in the era-defining 1980 film Urban Cowboy. The 1980s also saw hits on Liberty and RCA, including "Love Will Turn You Around" (1982), the Sheena Easton duet "We've Got Tonight" (1983), and the memorable Dolly Parton duet "Islands in the Stream" (1983). He invested in Branson, Missouri, ventures; published several well-received photography books; authored two children's books; engaged in major philanthropic endeavors; and launched a chain of restaurants.