Kenny Rogers “Kenny”
It might be hard to convince people born in this century that Kenny Rogers was not only a real life man, but also one of the best-selling popular music acts of all time. Based on the few songs that have endured and the photo evidence, I think it would be more reasonable to explain Kenny as a character that the Hallmark Channel invented based on the success of “Anchorman.” All beard and blown dry hair, the 70s icon has the small features and hugability of a giant teddy bear. His croon, so pleasant and raspy, is barely loud enough to wake a cranky newborn and yet somehow also sexy enough to get late middle-agers flush and poignant enough to get truckers choked up. That massive appeal -- from young to old and from country to suburb -- is no doubt what helped him sell nearly two hundred million albums in his career. Yes -- Kenny Rogers was very much a real man and, in the late 70s and much of the 80s, a gigantic Pop star at that.
Kenny Rogers came to music early but to stardom late. He achieved minor fame with his hard to classify brand of Southern Rock in the 1960s with The First Edition. However, when his breakthrough occurred in 1978 with “The Gambler,” he was already on the verge of forty. Having worked so hard for so long to get to that moment, Kenny was determined to keep up the momentum. Between 1978 and 1990, Kenny Rogers released nineteen albums. Most were solo, some were duets and a couple were Christmas records. But all kept Kenny’s foot on the accelerator. He was on TV. In movies. On Country radio. Pop radio. Oldies radio. Soft Rock radio. Adult Contemporary radio. For over a decade, Kenny Rogers was everywhere.
His appeal is one of masculine kindness. He smiles easily but not too big. His outfits had an almost cartoonish sex appeal, with the chest hair, the cross necklace and the big collars. His music almost entirely lacks edge. In fact, many of his biggest hits were softer recordings of songs that were previously “more Country” or “more Rock.” And, as if to both accentuate and temper his masculinity, he released countless duets with leading ladies from Dottie West to Lynda Carter (yes, that Lynda Carter) to Kim Carnes to Sheena Easton to, of course, Dolly Parton. As a song selector, Kenny gravitated towards ballads and a middle of the road flavor of Pop that sits much closer to The Commodores and James Taylor than to, say, Hank Williams. And, as a singer, his voice is really more of a slow, deep whisper than an articulation. At his best, he lands somewhere between Lionel Richie and Bob Seger on Valium.
Like most, I knew countless Kenny Rogers songs but practically none of his albums. I knew one day his number would get called for Past Prime. And when it did, I selected 1979s “Kenny” as the text. As the solo follow-up to “The Gambler” (he had an album of duets in between), Kenny was forty one when his self-titled album was released. As we know from the song, he had walked away from the table with his winnings in hand. He had beaten the house. And, on “Kenny” he decided to use that equity on a lovely, schmaltzy, lite set of ballads and AM radio fare that was so perfectly “of the moment” that the album would go on to sell nearly twenty million copies worldwide. Yes -- you read that correctly. In 1979, Kenny Rogers was very nearly Michael Jackson in 1983.
There is a lot to love about “Kenny.” Its eleven songs clock in at thirty six minutes. Three songs are under three minutes. Ten are under four minutes. Kenny Rogers was making singles for radio. No edits. No epics. Nothing artsy. Singles. It’s easy to admire the unrestrained commercial ambition of it all. Additionally, he was making singles for all of radio. He wasn’t content with the constraints of Country Radio. No. On “Kenny,” he takes aim at most every format other than Hard Rock. The vocal performances on the album are almost uniformly lovely. By this age, he had mastered his instrument and knew what he could do better than anyone. What he could not do, he did not attempt. And, finally, he selected several tremendous -- if dated and sentimental -- Pop Ballads to feature.
The biggest of the hits from “Kenny” is “You Decorated My Life,” which heaps strings upon strings and flutes upon strings to deliver the prettiest, deep whisper, AM radio ballad you might ever hear. While selling millions of copies as a single, this track also cemented its place as one of the truly great “first dance” wedding songs of the last fifty years. “Goodbye Marie” is a brisk, randy three minute jaunt straight from the pages of Ron Burgundy about a three week fling the singer had, full of tequila and no strings attached fun. When the tequila runs out, the singer heads back home to Houston, the girl stays behind to pine, and the fun is over, before it even began. Amazingly, this is not the only song on the album about a short lived, alcohol fueled sexcapade. The horny bear goes straight after Jimmy Buffett on “Santiago Midnight Moonlight” and tries to capture the mild heat of his margarita-fueled Mexican fling. Not one to wallow in the schmaltz for a moment longer than the single requires, Kenny sings:
Thinkin' back now it's hard to say
Why I left the good ole USA.
As I recall I left some girl back there,
But I swear I can't even remember her name.
I'm just thinkin' bout
Santiago midnight moonlight,
Tropical stars above,
Santiago midnight moonlight,
The perfect place to fall in love
Among the many shades of Kenny Rogers, we get some very lite Country Funk on “You Turn The Light On,” complete with cowbell and triangle. On “Tulsa Turnaround,” Kenny manages to make a Funky Soul song completely devoid of Funk or Soul. Finally, on “In and Out of Your Heart,” Kenny serves up some roller rink disco that evokes the Bee Gees but is so devoid of edge as to make the Brothers Gibb seem like The Clash.
With the Funk dispatched, Kenny returns to his roots for the huge Country ballad, “One Man’s Woman,” a song about a married Mom who is having an affair. Only Kenny Rogers could make the subject poignant, sweet, beautiful and positively sexist. In three minutes, he reduces his subject to “one man’s woman, and one man’s on the side.” Forty years later, it’s a song that is really hard to like and a little too easy to love.
All of the strings, croon and pageantry, though, are foreplay for “Coward of the County,” a Country-ish Folk song that had been kicking around for some time before Kenny opted to transform it into “The Gambler, Part 2.” Unmistakably similar to his huge hit from 1978, “Coward of the County” tells the story of Tommy, who was taught by his father to take the high road in the face of violence. This virtue got him the titular reputation until he was forced to fight to defend his true love, Betsy, who was gang raped by the three Gaitlin brothers. Yes. I am not making this up. In 1979, Kenny Rogers scored a pretty big, Country crossover hit with a singalong about a man, widely considered a sissy, who beat the shit out of three local rapist brothers.
If you are old enough to remember this album, there’s no great reason for you to revisit it. If you were born in the last thirty years and enjoyed “Anchorman,” I would suggest you check out “Kenny” to help you parse reality from parody. Turns out, it’s not so easy. And if you are me, and you just spent two days with this album, you might just file it away and then move on to Stephen Malkmus solo, or something. Or you might quietly check out Kenny’s 1981 album, “Share Your Love,” which was produced by Lionel Richie, features “Through The Years,” and sold almost ten million copies. And then you might dig a little deeper into Google to see if that rumor that Kenny set up a personal, phone sex number for his lady fans in the the 1990s was really true.
Turns out it was. All of it was true.