Crossover country star Kenny Rogers dies at 81
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Kenny Rogers, the smooth, Grammy-winning balladeer who spanned jazz, folk, country and pop with such hits as “Lucille,” “Lady” and “Islands in the Stream” and embraced his persona as “The Gambler” on records and on TV, died Friday night. He was 81.
He died at home in Sandy Springs, Georgia. Keith Hagan, his representative, said Rogers was under hospice care and died of natural causes.
The Houston-born performer with the husky voice and silver beard sold tens of millions of records, won three
Grammys and was the star of TV movies based on “The Gambler” and other songs, making him a superstar in the 1970s and ’80s. Rogers thrived for some 60 years before he retired from touring in 2017 at age 79.
“You either do what everyone else is doing and you do it better, or you do what no one else is doing ...” Rogers said in 2015. “And I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie (Nelson) or Waylon (Jennings) at what they did. So I found something that I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them. And I think people thought it was my desire to change country music. But that was never my issue.”
Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream” duet partner Dolly Parton posted a video on Twitter on Saturday morning, choking up as she held a picture of them. “I loved Kenny with all my heart and my heart is broken and a big ol’ chunk of it is gone with him today,” Parton said.
Rogers was a five-time CMA award winner, as well as the recipient of the CMA’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, the year he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He received 10 awards from the Academy of Country Music. He sold more than 47 million records in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
A true rags-to-riches story, Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights with seven siblings.
His breakthrough came when he was asked to join the New Christy Minstrels, a folk group, in 1966. The band reformed as First Edition and scored a pop hit with the psychedelic song, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” Rogers and First Edition mixed country-rock and folk on songs like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” a story of a Vietnam veteran begging his girlfriend to stay.