Facts About Kenny Rogers

In addition to singing, he did pretty good acting.

Kenny RogersPhoto byCreative Commons: Brett Jordan

There are a lot of layers to Kenny Rogers’ career. There was his time with The First Edition, his time singing with Dolly Parton and his time playing Brady Hawkes. And I enjoyed all three of those aspects of his career.

In the heading for this piece, I said he did pretty good acting. That’s not say I think Kenny was a good actor. I don’t think that was the case. I couldn’t see him playing Hamlet. But he did well in that he did what his fans liked. Those Gambler movies brought back stars from old westerns. And while the movies weren’t cinematic classics, they were entertaining, at least to guys like me.

Beyond that, I didn’t know a lot about Kenny Rogers. So, after more research, here are some things you didn’t know about Kenny Rogers.

1: Kenny was part of the reason the Eagles became a massive success.

He mentored Don Henley, helped the act sign their first contract and produced their first album. He helped them get started in, Life in the Fast Lane.

2: In the 70s, Kenny was seriously into tennis. He played eight hours a day, seven days a week for a while.

He even had an ATP ranking. Of course, if his rating on record charts was the same as his ATP ranking, he would have been broke.

3: There was a website that sort of spoofed Kenny. It was MenWhoLookLikeKennyRogers.com.

Kenny was good with it as long as it stayed in good taste. Hmm. I have the body for it, but not the facial hair.

4: Despite the success of the Gambler series, Rogers wasn’t much of a gambler.

Rogers started: “I learned a long time ago, I can’t win enough money to excite me, but I can lose enough to depress me.” So, Kenny learned to walk away.

5: Rogers interest in photography led him to publish two photobooks, “Kenny Rogers’ America” and “Your Friends and Mine.”

Your Friends and Mine is a collection of photos of famous people such as Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Dolly Parton. Actually, Kenny had different friends than I do.

6: Rogers opened up a chain of chicken restaurants called, Kenny Rogers Roasters.

The chain got some great publicity via Seinfeld when an episode featured a Kenny Rogers restaurant opened up near Kosmo Kramer’s place. Personally, I would rather have seen a place where comedians roasted Kenny Rogers, a la the old Dean Martin Roasters.

7: In 1966. he joined the New Christy Minstrels before leaving, with a number of other members of the group to form The First Edition in 1967.

His leaving the New Christy Minstrels resulted in the group renaming themselves the Even Newer Christy Minstrels. What’s that? Apparently, that didn’t happen.

8: In addition to the Gambler series, Rogers also starred as MacShayne series in The NBC Mystery Movie franchise.

Actually, the MacShayne character was also a gambler. Maybe Kenny’s acting range was more limited than I realized.

9: Kenny had a lot of success singing duets with country star, Dottie West.

He made an interesting observation about her. He said, “A lot of people sing words, Dottie West sang emojis. She must have been really hard to write for. Hold on, Kenny actually said she sang emotions. That does make more sense.

10: Later in his career, Kenny made use of another distributor for his album, “50 Years.”

It was available exclusively at Cracker Barrel. And it was a great way to follow up your pot roast.

11: When it came to keeping him centered, Smitty was the goat.

Actually, Smitty was the name Kenny gave his pet goat. Rogers gave Smitty credit for providing a calming influence after long and stressful touring schedules.