Celebrated country music icon, Kenny Rogers has passed on at the age of 81
Rogers “passed away peacefully at home from natural causes under the care of hospice and surrounded by his family,” according to a statement by representative Keith Hagan.
Rogers was raised in public housing in Houston Heights with seven siblings. As a 20-year-old, he had a gold single called That Crazy Feeling, under the name Kenneth Rogers, but when that early success stalled, he joined a jazz group, the Bobby Doyle Trio, as a standup bass player.
But 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.
After the group broke up in 1974, Rogers started his solo career and found a big hit with the country ballad Lucille, in 1977, which crossed over to the pop charts and earned Rogers his first Grammy.
Rogers invested his time and money in a variety of endeavours over the course of his career, including a passion for photography that led to several books, as well as an autobiography, Making It With Music. He had a chain of restaurants called Kenny Rogers Roasters, and was a partner behind a riverboat in Branson, Missouri.
In 2007 The Gambler became the unofficial anthem of the England World Cup rugby team, catapulting Rogers back into the spotlight.
He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013 – the same year he played at Glastonbury and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Country Music Association.
He acted in a variety of movies and television shows, most notably the title roles in Kenny Rogers as The Gambler and the MacShayne series for The NBC Mystery Movie, and the 1982 feature film Six Pack.
Kenny Rogers was married five times (with each marriage lasting longer than the previous one) and had five children. He married Janice Gordon on May 15, 1958; they divorced in April 1960 with one child. Rogers married Jean Rogers in October 1960 and divorced her in 1963. He married Margo Anderson in October 1964 and divorced her in 1976 with one child.
Rogers married Marianne Gordon on October 1, 1977, and divorced her in 1993 with one child. Rogers married for the fifth and final time when he married Wanda Miller on June 1, 1997. The couple had twin sons together.