In this season of Corona, we seem to be losing a lot of great artists, the kind of artists we celebrate on musicfreakdom. The grim ripper visited Vaughan Mason, Kenny Rogers and Finally Bill Withers. A lot of folks in my generation would remember Bill Withers monster hit, “ aint no sunshine”
As well as Kenny Rogers song
“the Gambler” or Roller skates by Vaughan Mason in the 80’s.
Since musicfreakdom is about celebrating the lives and times of music icons it is therefor befitting we do tributes to these great musicians. Incidentally not long ago we did a tribute to the the late Soul Makossa crooner Manu Dibango. Death has decided to add three more people to the list so who are we to question it in its ways
Kenny Rogers Aug 1938-Mar2020
Kenny Rogers is mostly associated with country music but people forget that he had hits across different genres of music, he was said to have had over 120 hits across different genres of music, sold well over 100 million records worldwide, he topped the charts for well over 200 weeks . A country music hall of famer, a song writer, singer, entrepreneur and actor. Kenny was one of the most successful artists of all times.
Kenny Rogers
Early Life
He was born in Texas in 1938 and was one of 8 children. Went to junior and high school and graduated from Jefferson High school in 1956, he had earlier won a talent show in 1949. After leaving high school he made his way to University of Houston.
Young Kenny
Music Career
Kenny started his music in the 50’s and experimented with different genres of music, i.e country, rock, pop. he did a solo late in the 50’s which was a minimal success, he moved on to join a jazz group called Bobby Doyle 3 . He kept on moving from group to group from the 50’s to the 60’s, not being satisfied, himself and 3 others formed a group called
FIRST EDITION. The group had a string of hits with Kenny as the lead vocalist, they disbanded in 1976 when Kenny decided to pursue a solo career.
Kenny found global success when he went solo in 1976, he made such great hits like Lucille 1977 which sold well over 5 million copies, more success was to follow as he played to my mind one of his greatest hits the Gambler, Coward in the country.
kenny was also very famous for his duets, he did a lot of duets with country music artist Dottie West, they did together, Everytime fools collide, what are we doing in love.
In the 80's he did a duet with Kim Carnes, dont fall in love with a dreamer,
He did Island in the streams with Lionel Richie
He did eyes that see in the dark with Barry Gibbs
He also did a duet with James Ingram
Kenny & Dolly Parton
Kenny & Barry Gibbs
Kenny & lionel Richie
Kenny Rogers career spanned 50 years from 1967 when he started, made several albums and moved across many recording companies and producers. Rogers started his gradual retirement in 2015 and was doing minimal tours in between. based on Doctors advice.
He finally succumbed to death in march 2020.
Acting Career
He had his debut as an actor in a 1982 movie, Six Pack which made well over $20M at the Box office.
Entrepreneurship
In 1991 he collaborated with former kentucky Chicken owner John Y Broom to found a restaurant chain called Kenny Rogers Roasters, Company is still on in Europe and Asia but folded up in the US
Personal Life
Married 5 times and sired 5 children, with an estimated net worth of about $250M
Rogers & family
Catalog
Kenny Rogers had too many songs and albums and to catalog all the songs would be too exhaustive so we going to list a few of his monumental works here
Love lifted me 1976
Every time fools collide 1978
The gambler 1978
Eyes that see in the dark 1983
The heart of the matter 1986
Christmas from the heart 1998
Awards
The award list is also exhaustive . musicfreakdom cannot list all of them, he won several American music awards, USA Today award, Academy of Country music Awards , Asap awards, Music City news, just to mention a few.
Many thanks to Wikipedia for providing through the net research material and the various media organisations whose images we have used
Click the link below to listen to the songs of the Artists featured on the Blog
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