Kenny Rogers, the legendary hitmaker: The five names he mentioned before his passing caused a stir due to a specific shared trait.
In his 2012 autobiography, Luck or Something Like It, legendary country music artist Kenny Rogers reflected on his decades-long career and revealed the five people who mattered most in his life, ranked in a specific order based on his personal memoirs.
Rogers passed away on March 20, 2020, at the age of 81 at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, due to natural causes under hospice care. Rather than producing a safe, standard celebrity memoir filled with superficial anecdotes, Rogers wrote candidly about his life, taking personal responsibility for the failures of his first four marriages and openly addressing his past.
Coming in at number five on his list is Lionel Richie. In 1980, when Rogers was already an established country superstar constrained by the commercial boundaries of the genre, he collaborated with Richie, a soul and funk musician from the Motown group The Commodores. Richie wrote, produced, and played piano on the song “Lady,” which Rogers performed.
The track achieved unprecedented success by reaching number one simultaneously on the American pop, country, and adult contemporary charts. This collaboration transformed Rogers into a global icon, sparking a deep friendship that lasted for the next 40 years until Rogers’ death, at which point Richie publicly mourned the loss of a brother and a friend.
At number four is Dolly Parton, with whom Rogers shared the most successful duet partnership in country music history. Their iconic partnership was born almost by accident in 1983 during the recording of Rogers’ album Eyes That See in the Dark. After struggling for four grueling days to record the Barry Gibb-written track “Islands in the Stream,” a frustrated Rogers admitted he no longer liked the song, prompting Gibb to suggest bringing in Dolly Parton.
Parton’s arrival saved the session, and the resulting duet shot to number one on both pop and country charts, remaining the best-selling country duet of all time. Their professional collaboration and friendship endured for four decades, highlighted by their final 2013 duet, “You Can’t Make Old Friends”. Following his death, Parton expressed that her time with him was one of the greatest treasures of her life.
Edward Floyd Rogers, his father, occupies the third spot on the list. Born in 1938 in Houston, Texas, Rogers grew up in poverty within the San Felipe Courts federal housing project during the Great Depression and World War II. His father, a carpenter who worked in the shipyards, played the fiddle and guitar around the house, planting the initial musical seeds in all eight of his children. However, his father also struggled with severe alcoholism.
One of the greatest regrets of Rogers’ life was that he never understood why his father drank, eventually coming to believe that the overwhelming pressure of supporting a large family on a carpenter’s wages broke him. His father passed away in 1975 at age 71, just two years before Rogers achieved massive solo stardom with “Lucille,” meaning his father never witnessed his son’s historic success.
At number two is his mother, Lucille Lois Rogers. Working night shifts as a nurse’s assistant and cleaning offices during the day, she managed to keep their impoverished household afloat and raised eight children in a housing project, helping Rogers become the first member of his family to graduate from high school in 1956.
She provided him with a piece of foundational advice that guided his entire 60-year career: to find a job he loved so he would never work a day in his life. Although his breakthrough 1977 hit was titled “Lucille,” Rogers repeatedly clarified that the song was not written about his mother. She lived until 1991, surviving long enough to witness the full magnitude of his legendary career.
At the very top of the list, at number one, is Wanda Miller, his fifth wife. They met in an Atlanta restaurant in the 1990s when Rogers was in his late 50s and she was in her late 20s. Despite an initial lack of enthusiasm from her parents regarding their 28-year age gap, the couple married on June 1, 1997.
Reflecting on his four previous failed marriages, Rogers took full responsibility for their dissolutions, attributing them to his driven nature. He considered Wanda his true soulmate, and on July 6, 2004, she gave birth to identical twin sons, Justin Charles and Jordan Edward, when Rogers was 65 years old.
Recognizing the mathematical reality of his age and wanting to be present for his young sons’ upbringing, Rogers officially retired from touring in 2015, playing his final concert in Nashville in October 2017 at age 79. This deliberate choice allowed him to spend precious years at home with his wife and boys before passing away on March 20, 2020, when the twins were 15 years old.
Disclaimer: This story is fictional and created for entertainment purposes only.
Any names, characters, places, or events are fictitious or used fictitiously.
No real person or organization is intended to be portrayed.
