Kenny Rogers, country-pop hitmaker and crossover star, dies at 81

Kenny Rogers was broke, three times divorced and picking out a living as a bass player with a country-rock outfit called “The First Edition” when a sentimental ballad about a lovesick husband rolled onto his lap.

In “Lucille,” Rogers found a comfortable middle ground in the vast stretches between country and pop music, fertile turf that would yield a remarkable string of aching love songs and narrative ballads about gamblers, drifters and lost souls searching for love.

While country music purists balked at his syrupy message-in-a-song ballads, his fans packed arenas that only the titans of rock could fill, his hits climbed the charts and his genial persona and bourbon-smooth voice became a natural fit in America in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Never far from the spotlight, Rogers died Friday of natural causes while in hospice care at his home in Sandy Springs, Ga., said his representative, Keith Hagan. He was 81.

“I loved Kenny with all my heart. My heart’s broken. A big ol’ chunk of it has gone with him today,” Dolly Parton, the musician’s frequent singing partner, said in a video tribute on Twitter.

Over the decades, the musical storyteller racked up an impressive catalog of hits — initially as a member of the First Edition starting in the late 1960s and later as a solo artist and duet partner with Parton — and earned three Grammy Awards, 19 nominations and a slew of accolades from country-music awards shows.

Credited with helping to blur the lines between country and pop, Rogers was belatedly inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013.

“I think part of it is that there’s a certain amount of resentment that I made country go pop, and yet I think it actually added a lot of viewers to it,” Rogers told the Boston Globe that same year. “As you can see now, it’s so much more pop than where I took it.”

Coming up in an era when Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson shaped the heart of the genre, Rogers remained a firm believer that country music was “the white man’s rhythm and blues.”

“It’s where the pain is. And I think, to some extent, I ‘popped’ it so much that it lost some of the pain,” Rogers told CMT in 2012. “I never meant to do that, but on some of the songs through the years, like ‘She Believes in Me’ or ‘You Decorated My Life,’ those are not country country songs.”

Rogers believed he took country music to a mainstream audience, and he was instantly recognized for his signature look: a neatly trimmed beard, a shock of silver hair and flared shirt collars. He modeled his aesthetic after “Grizzly Adams” star Dan Haggerty for a particular reason. When he started out in his first group, the First Edition, he was the oldest member.

“I was three or four years older than all of them,” Rogers said in 2014. “They were looking for someone younger. I let my hair grow, I grew a beard — I got that from Dan Haggerty, the actor who was on TV at the time, and I liked the way he looked. I put an earring in my ear and wore sunglasses. After that, they wanted me with everything they had.”

At the height of his success, Rogers was a staple on the country-music charts, starred in TV movies and even fronted a fast-food chain bearing his name. (Kenny Rogers Roasters was referenced and ridiculed in shows ranging from “Seinfeld” to “Fresh Off the Boat.”) Rogers toed the line between risk-taking artist and crowd-pleasing performer, earning rave reviews from fans but the frequent critical ire of reviewers hoping for a fresh take on his classics.

Kinder reviews of his shows in this newspaper described Rogers “singing with musical understanding, subtlety and warmth” and another calling him “the kind of performer who generates undying, all-accepting love from his listeners.”

His husky voice conveyed the heart-wrenching tales of “Lady’s” knight in shining armor, the advice-dealing “Gambler” and “Lucille’s” lovelorn husband left with four hungry kids and a crop in the fields.

But that success, he repeatedly said, came with a steep price.

“There’s a fine line between being driven and being selfish,” Rogers wrote in his bestselling 2012 memoir, “Luck or Something Like It.”

He admitted to crossing that line many times.

Staying on the road six months at a time without going home during his early marriages was among those selfish acts. He disconnected with his wives and young children, but took responsibility for that later in life.

Upon announcing his initial retirement in 2015, Rogers vowed not to make the same mistake with his twin boys, Justin and Jordan, whom he had with his fifth wife, Wanda Miller. Rogers married Janice Gordon in 1958, who, as the story goes, became pregnant when Rogers lost his virginity at 19. He went on to marry Jean Rogers 1960 (they split in 1963), Margo Anderson in 1964 (they split in 1976), Marianne Gordon in 1977 (they split in 1993) and finally Wanda Miller in 1997.

“Not many people get to see the end of the rainbow, and I think I have,” Rogers said. “I think I’ve had the beauty of this career, and the beauty of getting to know you guys daily out on the road, and watching you kids grow up with me.”

Kenny Rogers performing at the Forum in Inglewood in October 1980.

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Rogers’ farewell retirement tour, the Gambler’s Last Deal, was cut short in 2018 so that the singer could “work through a series of health challenges.” He had another health scare in May 2019 that landed him in the hospital for dehydration.

“I didn’t want to take forever to retire,” Rogers said in his 2018 statement. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to say farewell to the fans over the course of the past two years.... I could never properly thank them for the encouragement and support they’ve given me throughout my career and the happiness I’ve experienced as a result of that.”

Kenneth Ray Rogers was born Aug. 21, 1938, in Houston, the fourth of Edward Floyd and Lucille Lois Hester Rogers’ eight children. His heritage was mixed: Irish on his mother’s side and potentially Native American on his father’s because of his grandmother, Della Rogers.

“We were poor people living in the projects, but we didn’t know it because we were all in the same boat,” he wrote of his upbringing in a Houston housing project built in the 1950s.

Though he grew up amid segregation, he said he always liked to think of himself as “color blind” and wrote of memories of friendly faces and people sitting out on their porches.

In high school, he formed his first band — a doo-wop group called the Scholars — and hit the charts young as a solo artist in the late 1950s. He performed “That Crazy Feeling” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” and played standup bass with the Bobby Doyle Three jazz trio. The sound influenced his music, but his mother’s passion for the country sound and listening to it growing up kept him in the country lane.

In 1966, he joined the folk group the New Christy Minstrels; then came the First Edition, which scored its first hit in 1967 with the LSD ode “Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In).” They followed that with “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” “Reuben James,” “Something’s Burning” and “Tell It All Brother.” Their success came with a name change, and the band started going by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.

Rogers left First Edition in 1976, and the rift wasn’t easy for the young singer.

“When the First Edition broke up, it was like my life had just lost all the footing because I was so used to having all these guys behind me…. I think when you walk out there alone, you better be prepared,” Rogers said.

But his solo career soon took off and so did his unique blend of country and pop. The heartbreaking “Lucille” and its vivid storytelling marked his first breakthrough. Written by Roger Bowling and Hal Bynum, the bitter-edged 1977 tune and its corresponding Grammy Award launched him to superstardom.

He followed up his first solo hit with duets with Dottie West (“Daytime Friends,” “Sweet Music Man” and “Love or Something Like It”), followed by his major hits, “The Gambler” and “Coward of the County.” The latter two songs were adapted into TV shows he starred in.

Rogers said that when he first recorded “The Gambler,” written by Don Schlitz, he just thought it was about gambling. But Schlitz wasn’t a gambler and, in fact, wrote the song about his life philosophy. Schlitz simply used gambling as an analogy, yielding the iconic lyrics: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em / Know when to fold ’em / Know when to walk away / And know when to run.”

Kenny Rogers on his farewell tour in 2017.

(Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP / Getty Images)

“The Gambler” TV movie of 1980, starring Rogers in the western’s title role as Brady Hawkes, spawned four follow-ups and became the longest-running miniseries franchise on television at the time. It forged Rogers’ image as a media perennial — a lovable con man gone good who sang romantic songs.

His version of Lionel Richie’s “Lady” in 1980 was a pivot from the commercial country hits with which he had been identified, according to a 1987 review in The Times. And his decision the same year to release “Gideon,” a relatively uncommercial concept album about the Old West, was even bolder.

His 1983 hit duet with Parton, “Islands in the Stream,” written by the Bee Gees, and the duo’s palpable chemistry cemented Rogers’ lifelong friendship with Parton.

“Everybody always thought we were having an affair. We didn’t. We just teased each other and flirted with each other for 30 years,” he said on HuffPost live in 2013. “It keeps a lot of tension there.”

Rogers reunited with Parton in 2013 for “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” a poignant duet that celebrated their decades-long bond and the title track from his studio album that year.

Rogers was among the artists who participated in the 1985 recording of “We Are the World,” raising millions of dollars for famine relief in Africa. The following year, he co-chaired the embattled “Hands Across America” fundraiser and also had an operation to remove a cyst from his vocal cords.

By 1998, Rogers’ stream of steady hits waned and he launched his Dreamcatcher label with Jim Mazza. The move marked a major career comeback and saw him revisit the top of the charts with 1999’s “The Greatest,” which he followed up with “Buy Me a Rose.” But in 2001, the label immersed him in a legal showdown with his longtime manager, Ken Kragen, who shepherded the careers of Richie, Trisha Yearwood and Travis Tritt.

Other side projects that kept the singer active were tennis and photography. He shot a portrait of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton at the White House and in 2014 was awarded an honorary masters of photography from the Professional Photographers of America.

Rogers also released books of his photos, wrote several short stories and appeared off-Broadway in the Christmas musical “The Toy Shoppe.” The Christmas theme continued with the 2015 release of his “Once Again It’s Christmas” album, which featured fellow country stars Alison Krauss and Jennifer Nettles, among others.

Relishing an unlikely renaissance late in his career, Rogers played to younger generations when he appeared at rock-centric music festivals such as Bonnaroo (2012) and Glastonbury (2013) — and to rave reviews, much to his surprise.

“I’m firmly convinced that at this point in my career, my audience falls into one of two categories: either people born since the ’80s whose parents forced them to listen to my music as [a form of] child abuse, or people who were born before the ’60s and can no longer remember the ’60s,” he told the Boston Globe in 2013.

Rogers is survived by his wife Wanda and five children, Kenny Jr., Christopher, Justin, Jordan and Carole.

Times staff writers James Reed and Steve Marble contributed to this report.

1/33

Kobe Bryant, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sean Connery and more.  (Los Angeles Times)

2/33

Rafer Johnson, winner of the 1960 Olympic decathlon gold medal, was a man whose legacy was interwoven with Los Angeles history, beginning with his performances as a world-class athlete at UCLA and punctuated by the night in 1968 when he helped disarm Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin at the Ambassador Hotel. Johnson lit the Olympic flame at the opening of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. He was 86.
  (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

3/33

With his quick wit and easy smile, Alex Trebek drove the game show “Jeopardy!” up the ratings charts and became a welcome television host in America’s living rooms. As the quiz show rolled through the decades, Trebek remained a comfortable fit — in a 2014 Reader’s Digest poll, Trebek ranked as the eighth-most trusted person in the United States, right behind Bill Gates and 51 spots above Oprah Winfrey. He was 80.
  (Los Angeles Times)

4/33

Sean Connery was forever tied to the role of James Bond, secret agent 007, who preferred his martinis shaken, not stirred. The Scottish actor first took on the role in the 1962 action-thriller “Dr. No,” which launched one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. He was 90.
  (MGM Home Entertainment INC)

5/33

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s speed and innovations along the fretboard inspired a generation of imitators as the band bearing his name rose to MTV stardom and multiplatinum sales over 10 consecutive albums. The streak made Van Halen one of the most successful bands in rock history, including two albums that reached diamond status (10 million copies sold): 1978’s debut “Van Halen” and 1984’s “1984.” He was 65.  (Wibbitz/Getty)

6/33

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg championed women’s rights — first as a trailblazing civil rights attorney who methodically chipped away at discriminatory practices, then as the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and finally as an unlikely pop culture icon. A feminist hero dubbed Notorious RBG, Ginsburg became the leading voice of the court’s liberal wing, best known for her stinging dissents on a bench that mostly skewed right since her 1993 appointment. She was 87.
  (Kiichiro Sato / Associated Press)

7/33

Chadwick Boseman’s breakout role was playing Dodger Jackie Robinson in the 2013 sports biopic “42.” The next year, he made an electrifying lead turn as James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, in “Get on Up.” Then came the role that would change his career: As Black Panther, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Black superhero, Boseman became the face of Wakanda to millions of fans around the world and helped usher in a new and inclusive era of superhero blockbusters. He was 43.
  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

8/33

Sumner Redstone outmaneuvered rivals to assemble one of America’s leading entertainment companies, now called ViacomCBS, which boasts CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Showtime, the Simon & Schuster book publisher and Paramount Pictures movie studio. Unlike contemporaries Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, Redstone was not a visionary, but rather a hard-charging lawyer and deal maker who pursued power and wealth through the accumulation of content companies. He was 97.

  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

9/33

Regis Philbin reigned for decades as the comfortable and sometimes cantankerous morning host of “Live,” first with Kathie Lee Gifford and later Kelly Ripa, above. He earned Emmy nominations by the armful, hosted New Year’s Eve specials, rode in parades, set a record for the most face-time hours on television and helped reinvigorate prime-time game shows with “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” He was 88.
  (Charles Sykes / Associated Press)

10/33

Rep. John Lewis famously shed his blood at the foot of a Selma, Ala., bridge in a 1965 demonstration for Black voting rights, and went on to become a 17-term Democratic member of Congress. An inspirational figure for decades, Lewis was one of the last survivors among members of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle. He was 80.
  (Mark Humphrey / Associated Press)

11/33

Country music firebrand and fiddler Charlie Daniels started out as a session musician, which included playing on Bob Dylan’s 1969 album “Nashville Skyline,” and beginning in the early 1970s toured endlessly with his own band, sometimes doing 250 shows a year. In 1979, Daniels had a crossover smash with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which topped the country chart, hit No. 3 on the pop chart and was voted single of the year by the Country Music Assn. He was 83.  (Rick Diamond / Getty Images for IEBA)

12/33

Carl Reiner first came to national attention in the 1950s on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” where he wrote alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and other comedy legends. He later created “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” one of TV’s most fondly remembered sitcoms, and directed hit films including “The Comic” (1969), starring Van Dyke; “Where’s Poppa?” (1970), starring George Segal and Ruth Gordon; “Oh, God!” starring George Burns and John Denver; and four films starring Steve Martin. He was 98.   (Associated Press )

13/33

Wisecracking straight man Fred Willard rose to prominence playing an amateur actor in the 1996 film “Waiting for Guffman.” He won an American Comedy Award for his role as an over-the-top dog show host in the 2000 film “Best in Show,” and spent three seasons on the hit CBS sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond” as the conservative middle-school vice principal Hank MacDougall, earning three Emmy nominations. He was 86.  (Suzanne Tenner / HBO)

14/33

The flamboyant, piano-pounding Little Richard roared into the rock ‘n’ roll spotlight in the 1950s with hits such as “Tutti-Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” The Georgia native’s raucous sound fused gospel
fervor and R&B sexuality, profoundly influencing the Beatles, James Brown (who succeeded him in one of his early bands), Jimi Hendrix (one of his backup musicians in the mid-’60s) and Bruce Springsteen. He was 87.
  (Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times)

15/33

Roy Horn was the dark-haired half of Siegfried & Roy, the German-born illusionists whose disappearing white tigers and lions made them one of the biggest draws on the Las Vegas Strip. Horn reportedly had never had an onstage accident with the cats until 2003, when the tiger Mantecore, above, attacked him at the Mirage Hotel & Casino, severely wounding his neck. He was 75.
  (Siegfried & Roy)

16/33

Don Shula was the NFL’s winningest coach, leading the 1972 Miami Dolphins to the league’s only undefeated season. He coached the Baltimore Colts to one Super Bowl and the Dolphins to five, winning Lombardi Trophies after the 1972 and ’73 seasons. He was 90.
  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

17/33

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak crushed dissent for decades until the 2011 Arab Spring movement drove him from power. During his presidency, which spanned nearly 30 years, he protected Egypt’s stability as intifadas roiled Israel and the Palestinian territories, the U.S. led two wars against Iraq, Iran fomented militant Shiite Islam across the region and global terrorism complicated the divide between East and West. He was 91.  (Sameh Sherif / AFP/Getty Images)

18/33

Among his 40-odd films, burly Brian Dennehy played a sheriff who jailed Rambo in “First Blood,” a serial killer in “To Catch a Killer” and a corrupt sheriff in “Silverado.” On Broadway, he was awarded Tonys for his roles in “Death of a Salesman” (1999) and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (2003). He was 81.  (Dia Dipasupil)

19/33

Singer-songwriter John Prine broke onto the folk scene in 1971 with a self-titled album that included two songs brought to broader audiences by Bette Midler and Bonnie Raitt: “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery,” respectively. In 2019, he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was 73.  (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for Stagecoach)

20/33

Country singer Kenny Rogers racked up an impressive string of hits — initially as a member of The First Edition starting in the late 1960s and later as a solo artist and duet partner with Dolly Parton — and earned three Grammy Awards, 19 nominations and a slew of accolades from country-music awards shows. Country purists balked at his syrupy ballads, but his fans packed arenas that only the titans of rock could fill. He was 81.  (Suzanne Mapes / Associated Press)

21/33

Swedish actor Max von Sydow starred in several Ingmar Bergman movies, including “The Seventh Seal” (above, at left) and “The Virgin Spring,” then built a varied body of U.S. work that included the 1973 horror blockbuster “The Exorcist.” In a career that began in 1949, his rich repertory included Jesus Christ, clergymen, pontiffs, knights, conquerors, villains and the devil incarnate. He was 90.  (File photo)

22/33

Xerox researcher Larry Tesler pioneered concepts that made computers more user-friendly, including moving text through cut, copy and paste. In 1980, he joined Apple, where he worked on the Lisa computer, the Newton personal digital assistant and the Macintosh. He was 74.  (AP)

23/33

Mathematician Katherine Johnson calculated rocket trajectories for NASA’s early space missions, including Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space, and John Glenn’s orbits around the planet. In 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, and the next year was portrayed in the film “Hidden Figures.” She was 101.  (NASA/Bill Ingalls )

24/33

Ski industry pioneer Dave McCoy transformed a remote Sierra peak into the storied Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. Over six decades, it grew from a downhill depot for friends to a profitable operation of 3,000 workers and 4,000 acres of ski trails and lifts, a mecca for generations of skiers and boarders. He was 104.  (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

25/33

Veteran TV personality Orson Bean brought his wit to “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth,” guest-starred on variety shows and bantered with talk show hosts such as Johnny Carson and Mike Douglas. Later in his career, he starred in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and “Desperate Housewives” while becoming a mainstay of Los Angeles’ small theater scene. He was 91.  ( Sean Smith)

26/33

Screen icon Kirk Douglas brought a clenched-jawed intensity to an array of heroes and heels, receiving Oscar nominations for his performances as an opportunistic movie mogul in the 1952 drama “The Bad and the Beautiful” and as Vincent van Gogh in the 1956 drama “Lust for Life.” As executive producer of “Spartacus,” Douglas helped end the Hollywood blacklist by giving writer Dalton Trumbo screen credit under his own name. He was 103.  (Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)

27/33

“Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark became a perennial best-seller, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Her sales topped 100 million copies, and many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She was 92.  (Associated Press)

28/33

Fred Silverman was the head of programming at CBS, where he championed a string of hits including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “All in the Family,” “MASH” and “The Jeffersons.” Later at ABC, he programmed “Laverne & Shirley,” “The Love Boat,” “Happy Days” and the 12-hour epic saga “Roots.” He was 82.  (Associated Press)

29/33

Kobe Bryant was just 18 when he started playing for the Lakers, but by the end of his 20-year career — all of it as a Laker — the Black Mamba was a five-time world champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist and 18-time All-Star. His post-basketball career included an Oscar for the animated short “Dear Basketball” and a series of children’s books that became New York Times bestsellers. He was 41.  (Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE / Getty Images)

30/33

Former California Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark Jr. represented the East Bay in Congress for 40 years. The influential Democrat helped craft the Affordable Care Act, the signature healthcare achievement of the Obama administration, and also created the 1986 law best known as COBRA, which allows workers to stay on their employer’s health insurance plan after they leave a job. He was 88.  (Associated Press)

31/33

News anchor Jim Lehrer appeared 12 times as a presidential debate moderator and helped build “PBS NewsHour” into an authoritative voice of public broadcasting. The program, first called “The Robert MacNeil Report” and then “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report,” became the nation’s first one-hour TV news broadcast in 1983. Lehrer was 85.  (David McNew / Getty Images)

32/33

Terry Jones was a founding member of the Monty Python troupe who wrote and performed for their early ’70s TV series and films including “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in 1975 and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in 1979. After the Pythons largely disbanded in the 1980s, Jones wrote books on medieval and ancient history, presented documentaries, wrote poetry and directed films. He was 77.  (Associated Press)

33/33

Rush drummer Neil Peart was one of the most accomplished instrumentalists in rock history. Peart often cited swing-era drummers Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich among his primary inspirations, although he also credited Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and John Bonham as major influences. He was 67.  (Andrew MacNaughtan)