Remember Charlie, Kenny Rogers was a pop singer first, a country singer out of necessity. He is, by all accounts, a classic example of an artist embracing one genre when success in another fails.

According to Bobby Poe and Mitch Carday, two Washington, D.C. music promoters in the 60's and early 70's when I worked with them, they booked an out-of-work pop singer, Kenny Rogers, into a country dive in Waldorf, Maryland. Turns out, it was a good fit, and the rest, as you know only too well, is history.

Makes you wonder if there would ever have been a "Gambler" had Kenny Rogers and the First Edition amounted to more than a one-hit pop phenomenon?

P.E. Knudsen