Through the years, you never let us down.
Even during his commercial dry periods, Kenny just kept going – luckily for us, he never folded or walked away – and always seemed to bounce back in a major way, shooting to solo stardom a full seven years after his last major hit with the First Edition and making Billboard headlines in 2000 by returning to the pop Top 40 for the first time in sixteen years with the song “Buy Me a Rose.” We’ll miss you, Kenny. Not only did Kenny command such respect within the business to have superstars like Lionel Richie and Barry Gibb leap at the chance to write and produce for him, but Kenny also proved to be a star-maker of his own, providing much-needed early career boosts to Don Henley (whose pre-Eagles band Shiloh was signed to Amos Records on the endorsement of Rogers, who’d produce their lone album), Kim Carnes (alongside whom he had briefly served as a member of the legendary folk group The New Christy Minstrels in 1966) and a yet-to-land-a-record-deal aspiring singer-songwriter named Richard Marx. “The Gambler,” as he would come to be nicknamed, did it all with great grace, too, never succumbing in any significant way to the hottest musical fads of any given moment and consistently demonstrating good taste in his selection of material.
From 1967 through 2015, the late Kenny Rogers issued a staggering total of fifty studio albums (not counting live albums, compilations, or soundtracks!), first as the co-lead-vocalist and bassist for the co-ed late ‘60s/early ‘70s country-rock outfit The First Edition, and then, of course, as a multi-platinum solo artist, racking up a then-unheard number of pop crossover hits for a country artist in the process, reaching the pop Top 40 twenty times in all on his own between 19 alone.