Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers was an American country singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor whose six-decade music career produced multiple defining 1970s and 1980s American country-and-pop music — particularly his 1978 single "The Gambler." He was born Kenneth Ray Rogers on August 21, 1938, in Houston, Texas, into a working-class American Texan family. His father Edward Floyd Rogers was a Texas shipyard-area carpenter, and his mother Lucille Lois Hester was a homemaker.

His teenage and early-adulthood music career across 1956–1966 — across multiple Houston-area rock-and-roll bands (particularly The Scholars, with whom he recorded the 1958 single "That Crazy Feeling" at age 19) and his 1967–1968 work as a Houston-area folk-and-jazz band Bobby Doyle Three bassist — preceded his 1967 founding of the late-1960s American folk-rock band the First Edition.

The 1968 First Edition single "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" — released by Reprise Records — produced his early-career American folk-rock public profile. The First Edition's subsequent 1969 second commercial single "Reuben James" and 1969 third commercial single "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" extended his late-1960s American folk-rock public profile.

His 1976 transition to a solo career — across his 1976 United Artists Records signing — launched his mid-1970s and 1980s American country-music commercial breakthrough. His 1977 second solo commercial single "Lucille" — released April 1977 by United Artists Records — became his first American Billboard Hot Country Songs number-one single.

His November 15, 1978 sixth solo commercial album The Gambler — released by United Artists Records — sold over five million American copies and produced his American country-pop public profile through his title-track single "The Gambler" (which won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male). The 1978 single launched the subsequent four CBS TV-movie sequels The Gambler (1980), The Gambler: The Adventure Continues (1983), The Gambler III: The Legend Continues (1987), and The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), in which Rogers played the gambling card-player Brady Hawkes.

He died on March 20, 2020, at age 81, in Sandy Springs, Georgia, of natural causes related to his ongoing late-2010s health complications.

His name Kenny is the English short form of Kenneth (from the Scottish-Gaelic Coinneach meaning "handsome"). Kenny has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.