LOS ANGELES: Country music legend Kenny Rogers, whose career spanned six decades, has died at the age of 81, his family said.
“Kenny Rogers passed away peacefully at home from natural causes under the care of a hospice and surrounded by his family,” they said in a statement late Friday.
“The family is planning a small private service at this time out of concern for the national Covid-19 emergency.”
The Texas-born singer was known for a string of hits including The Gambler, Lucille and Islands in the Stream, a duet with Dolly Parton.
Rogers embarked on a world farewell tour in 2016 but in April 2018 he cancelled the last few shows citing “a series of health challenges”.
Rogers started his career in the late 1950s and quickly became active in rockabilly, jazz and other genres that he brought into his country style. He went on to have 24 number one hits, was a six-time Country Music Awards winner and a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
His easygoing ballads and constant touring won him mainstream pop appeal, as did his popular takes on Christmas standards.
Rogers also came to prominence through his collaboration with Dolly Parton and appearances on films and television programmes including The Muppet Show.
Singing in a husky voice that exuded sincerity and warmth, Rogers sold well over 100 million records in a career that spanned seven decades. He had 21 No.1 country hits, while Islands in the Stream reached No.1 on the pop charts as well.
Long before the ascendancy of stars such as Garth Brooks and Shania Twain in the 1990s, Rogers was among the first country artists to sell out arenas.
His popularity stemmed partly from his genial persona and rugged good looks but also from his ability to inhabit his material, which, he often said, was of two main types: love songs like You Decorated My Life and narrative ballads like The Gambler and Lucille.
“All the songs I record fall into one of two categories, as a rule,” he said in a 2012 interview with National Public Radio. “One is ballads that say what every man would like to say and every woman would like to hear. The other is story songs that have social significance.
“Reuben James was about a black man who raised a white child,” he continued, referring to a 1969 song that was a Top 40 hit for his group Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. “Coward of the County was about a rape. Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town was about a guy who came home from war.”
Duo recordings were a prominent part of Rogers’ repertoire, accounting for more than a dozen country hits, including eight No.1 records. Several of them, including Don’t Fall in Love With a Dreamer, a 1980 duet with pop singer Kim Carnes, and We’ve Got Tonight, a remake of a Bob Seger hit performed with Scottish singer Sheena Easton, were pop successes as well.
Rogers came by his wide-ranging musical sensibilities naturally. After graduating from high school in Houston, he played upright bass in the Bobby Doyle Three, a well-regarded jazz trio. He became a member of the folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels in the mid-1960s.
He later experimented with pop psychedelia on the First Edition’s 1967 single Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), a Top 10 pop hit written by Mickey Newbury, with whom Rogers attended high school.
Rogers is survived by Wanda Miller, his wife of 22 years, and the couple’s twin sons, Justin and Jordan.