Rogers and out

Even music fans with an aversion to both MOR pop and country music must have heard several of Kenny Rogers' impressive catalogue of hit records, including ‘Lady’, ‘Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town’, ‘The Gambler,’ ‘Islands In The Stream,’ ‘We’ve Got Tonight’ or ‘Coward Of The County.’
What might be less commonly-known is that a high percentage of his hits have been collaborations with other artists, from Ronnie Milsap to Sheena Easton, Dolly Parton, Kim Carnes and Alison Krauss. So is all this duetting business just a cynical means of marketing Rogers to other audiences?

Rogers himself denies this.
“First of all, you have to have a song that you feel is capable of being a hit," he says. “Then I have to consider if it’s better to do it on my own or with somebody else. Then the song dictates who it might work with. But I don’t analyse it too much.”
But of all the hits, his favourite is the 1980 version of Lionel Richie’s ‘Lady’.
“What I look for in a love ballad is a lyric that says what a man wants to say and what a woman wants to hear," he proffers. "That song delivers on both counts, and maybe that explains why it was number one in the US pop charts.”
Where did Rogers draw his initial impulse to perform for a living?
“I went to see a Ray Charles gig and I watched the audience as they laughed and clapped and hung on his every note and his every word. I also noticed that the girls liked guys in bands, so this seemed like a great way to earn a living. And I was right!”
Although his massive countrified 1969 pop hit ‘Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town’ dealt graphically with the sufferings of war and was a timely release, given the uproar over America’s involvement in Vietnam, Rogers is unlikely to indulge in Dixie Chicks-style attacks on the present US government.
“I respect them for their views, but I think people pay to hear me sing. They don’t pay to hear me preach. I don’t want to impose my views on anybody. That’s not what I want to do.”