Kenny Rogers - The Gambler

Bror, my best friend in elementary school, had this album on tape. We played it and Michael Jackson's Thriller nonstop for at least two years, as we built lego spaceships, and played GI Joes, Masters of the Universe, Star Wars... Still, besides The Gambler itself (a song that was around before Kenny covered it, apparently there is a Johnny Cash version that I'll have to get my hands on) and She Believes in Me, I can't say I remembered much of this album.

So I grabbed it from the library the other day. I can see why it was popular and why it had crossover appeal. I am not very familiar with what Country music was doing in 1978. But besides the Gambler itself (which honestly doesn't even sound Country other than the storyline), almost nothing in here strikes me as Country. There is a lot more Rock and Funk type of sound going on. In fact, I would not have said this was a country album unless I knew that Kenny was a "country superstar".

There is a very interesting array of songs in here, such as "Morgana Jones" which as near as I can tell is about the narrator's experiences with an ugly hooker, and "Little More Like Me", which I was thinking is about Jesus, but I am not sure (is there a pattern here?). I was hoping to validate some of my assumptions about the lyrics. But apparently Kenny Co. has mounted a systematic campaign to remove all his lyrics from the internet, because every lyrics site I could find the titles on have the lyrics removed.

Here is a funny site: men who look like kenny rogers.

Kenny, on the other hand, doesn't look much like himself now.