Luck or Something Like It (5 page)

Late one afternoon my sister Barbara told me to listen to KNUZ radio because they were playing my record. I turned on my little Motorola and listened for three hours before I heard it. It wasn’t in heavy rotation yet, but it was there. It was strange; I remember thinking that it didn’t even sound like me. I was from the projects and now I was on the radio.

Lelan went to work promoting the single, and when regional radio started playing the song in heavy rotation, local sales took off. Lelan said that Carlton sold a million copies of “That Crazy Feeling.” I never saw anything from those million copies, if in fact that’s what sold, and in all fairness I doubt it sold that. But it did become a big enough hit that I was invited to perform on the premier rock-and-roll TV show of its time:
Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
When word of this got out, I got my first-ever write-up as a solo artist in the
Houston Chronicle
.

The headline was “Kenny Rogers, Local Boy, Is on the Way,” and the story read, in part:

A 19-year-old Houston singer whose tunes have been setting the record circuits on fire will take to the tube Thursday on
Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
Fans who watch the rock ’n’ roll stint on KTRK-TV (4
P.M.
daily) likely will hear Rogers sing his hit, “That Crazy Feeling.” Rogers, who once sang with the popular Houston-based the Scholars, has ventured out on his own. Reports are that his hit tune is currently the No. 2 best seller in this area. It has done landmark business in other areas of the country, too. Kenny is a graduate of Jeff Davis High School here and is currently attending the University of Houston.

It was the most exciting thing I could have ever dreamed of—flying to Philadelphia to appear on
the
teenage star-making TV show of the era. When I got to the studio, the producers had me sit in a soda shop set, eating a hot fudge sundae, singing “That Crazy Feeling.” I have no idea whose idea it was for me to be at a table eating ice cream, but I didn’t care. I was on
American Bandstand
and the whole country was watching.

This performance set me up for yet another of those “Who did you say you are?” moments like I’d had with Colleen, the judge’s daughter. Years later, I was talking to Dick Clark, who by then I had become good friends with, and I brought up that appearance. Dick looked a little confused. He obviously didn’t remember me.

“Come on, Dick,” I said. “You have to remember that show. Ed Townsend was there, ‘For Your Love.’ ”

“Oh, I remember Ed Townsend,” Dick said, brightening up.

“It was the same show!” I said excitedly. “I was wearing a gray suit and a white shirt and I sang ‘That Crazy Feeling’ in a soda shop.”

Dick frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Kenny. I just have no memory of you being there.” I was crushed. (I found out later that he was teasing me the whole time.)

Lelan was now promoting records for both Carlton and Pearl Records, but he was still thinking of new ways to push me as a solo singer. So we formed Ken-Lee Records and cut another couple of songs written by Lelan’s pal Ray Doggett. The A-side was “So Lonely Tonight,” backed by a song called “Beach Party.” We also recorded an old Cajun standard, “Jole Blon,” using a saxophone instead of an accordion. We were so clever—not successful, but clever.

It was important to me to get the Cajun pronunciation correct in this song, so we brought in a real live Cajun from Louisiana. He coached me phonetically on every syllable until I had it right. A few years ago when I was in Quebec, I thought it would be fun to do something that sounded “French” that the French Canadians could relate to, so I picked a guy from the front of the row and started singing “Jole Blon.” The guy kept shaking his head, saying “That’s not French” every time I blurted out another line. Obviously my “flawless” Cajun French wasn’t French enough for the Québécois.

When those destined-to-be-but-never-were classics “So Lonely Tonight,” “Beach Party,” and “Jole Blon” went absolutely nowhere, I did yet another song for Carlton, “For You Alone,” backed with Ray Doggett’s “I’ve Got a Lot to Learn.” Again, no traction—I had no hits for Carlton Records. Now divorced from Janice, I met Anita Bryant, who was on the same label at the time, and had a couple of dates with her. She had already been the second runner-up to Miss America in 1959 and was riding the wave of a genuine hit, “Paper Roses.” I was pretty impressed with her.

You’d think that not having a hit by then, after more than a few tries, would have gotten me down, but it didn’t. I had that positive Lucille Rogers attitude, believing that hard work and perseverance would in the end win out. . . . something would come along. After all, I had dated Anita Bryant. I had had a crackerjack write-up in the
Houston Chronicle
that all my friends and family could read. I had changed my stage name to Kenny, and to top it all off, I had been on
American Bandstand
!

Things weren’t all that bad. I have never forgotten the adage I learned in childhood that the wind can shift most any time. Like Grandpa Rogers had said all those years ago: “Never assume today is like it was yesterday.”

Chapter Six

Where It All Began . . . Jazz

As has happened often
in my life, just as things seem to hit a low point, a little bit of luck kicks in. After my first brush at a recording career and TV stardom, I started meeting a series of people around Houston and getting a run of gigs that would eventually lead to an entry into the world of jazz. I’ve often heard my various career moves—from jazz to folk to rock to country—described as “reinventions,” and I may have said that myself once or twice. I think a better way to put it is that I have always left myself open to change; I went where the music took me.

While attending the University of Houston for a brief period, I started hanging out at a lot of studios, playing guitar and singing on sessions, including ones where we harmonized on advertising jingles for local businesses such as hardware and furniture stores. Every one of them seemed to give the same message, “Don’t spend more than you have to,” when of course the real message was “Just spend it on us.” In any case, I was getting experience.

When an acclaimed regional jazz pianist named Bobby Doyle heard me play in a club one night in 1959, he asked me to join his group as a bass player. There was one big problem.

“I appreciate the offer, Bobby, but I’m not a bass player. I play guitar, and I’m not even that great at guitar!”

Bobby’s reply: “There’s more demand for bad bass players than bad guitar players.”

I figured Bobby wasn’t hiring me for my musicianship, and though I knew little about playing jazz, I jumped at the chance to work with someone so well respected. He heard something in my work that made him believe I could learn to play stand-up bass well enough to pass muster even with the professional jazz musicians who followed his work. Plus, he wanted more from me than simply the bass playing. He liked my ability to harmonize, and that three-part harmony was important to the sound he wanted for his group, the Bobby Doyle Three. This period marked a major shift in how I approached music in general.

It’s true that I started playing in bands for two reasons: a love of music and a desire to attract girls. It was my ticket to ride in high school. But when I started playing with Bobby Doyle, and his very savvy crowd of jazz fans began to give us feedback, my ambition changed. Now, instead of impressing the ladies, I wanted to impress my peers. It became important to me that other jazz musicians see me as a professional and not merely some kid along for the ride and the harmony singing.

I learned how to be a musician from Bobby Doyle. Many years later, David Letterman asked me to name the best musician I had ever worked with, and without hesitation I said, “Bobby Doyle.” Bobby had been blind from birth, and his entire world was music. In fact, we used to laugh and tell him after hours of rehearsal, “Bobby, some of us have to take care of things at home once in a while.” The “some of us” were drummer Don Russell and me. We’d keep at it: “Bobby! Some of us have to mow the lawn!”

He’d laugh, too, then continued to push us relentlessly to practice. The fact that we were ever taken seriously as a jazz trio was because of Bobby’s drive for perfection. I could never remember where B-flat on the bass was in the early days. We’d be playing along and he’d turn to me and say, “B-flat, goddammit!”

I’d go “Okay, okay,” and play the B-flat. It took rehearsal after rehearsal, but I finally got it.

We played our first show at the Saxony Club in Houston shortly after we formed, and the response was great. After word got around, we got bookings throughout the entire region. I needed the money to pay child support for my daughter, Carole, and for another reason: I’d gotten married again.

I married my second wife, a beauty named Jean Massey, less than a year after breaking up with Janice. The marriage to Jean lasted a little longer—about two years, this go-round—and probably ended for a lot of reasons, but the main one again was my obsession with music. At that stage, I was working six hours a night and rehearsing four hours a day and in between, looking for any work to survive. That is not a recipe for a healthy marriage.

That I loved being married should be obvious by now, given how many times I’ve tried it. I like almost everything about marriage. What it all boils down to, I guess, is I’m a nesting kind of person. The only one of my seven siblings who has anything vaguely negative to say about marriage is my sister Sandy, who has turned out to be the great caregiver in the family. She never married and laughs when she says, “There’s no need for
everyone
in this family to be miserable!”

The Bobby Doyle Three got booked at a Houston after-hours place named the Showbiz, owned by the Fenburg brothers, Paul and Freddie. The club held only about fifty or so people, but it was a hot spot because it was right across from the Shamrock Hotel and drew a great clientele because of the location. A lot of name acts played the Shamrock, and when their shows were over, they came across to the Showbiz to unwind. The Bobby Doyle Three could have found no better venue for getting our name out in front of other entertainers, jazz lovers, and musicians from all over the country. People like George Carlin, Buddy Greco, Lorne Greene, and Liza Minnelli came to listen to us.

One of my favorites was Tony Bennett, who came by every time he was in town. There were times when Bobby would get sloshed, then go onstage. Tony would say, “Bobby, can I come up and sing a song?” and Bobby would say, “In a minute, Tony.” I’m surprised Tony stayed our friend, but he did.

Lorne Greene, a huge star on the long-running network TV series
Bonanza,
used to stop in the Showbiz every time he was in Houston. Over a period of time, I got to know him on what I thought was a personal level. Maybe I wouldn’t have classified him as a close friend, but certainly an acquaintance. Every time he left the Showbiz, on his way out of Houston, Lorne told me to give him a call “the next time you come out to L.A.” He gave me his phone number several times, just to make sure I could reach him. Boy, it was
great
to have such a fan. As it turned out, I did get out to L.A. with the group and I did use that phone number to call my fan and friend Lorne.

“Hello, Lorne? This is Kenny Rogers from Houston. You said to call you when I got to Los Angeles.”

“Who did you say this is?”

“Kenny Rogers, from Houston. The Bobby Doyle Three—we played at the Showbiz.”

“How did you get this number?”

“You gave it to me. Remember? It was when you came to one of our shows over at the Showbiz. You told me to call.”

“I would never have given out my private home number,” he said frostily.

Oops,
I thought. “Sorry,” I said, and hung up.

Not long after that I saw him on an airplane as I was walking through first class to get to coach. I decided to give it another try after the plane had taken off. A lot had happened between the time he’d come to hear us play at the Showbiz and the time I’d called him in L.A. This was at the very beginning of the 1960s, and
Bonanza
was on its way to becoming a number one TV series. Maybe if he actually saw me, he would remember all the times we sat together at the Showbiz and talked about music.

I made my way up to first class, and smiled at him. “Hi,” I said. “It’s Kenny Rogers.”

“So?” Lorne looked up at me over a pair of little half-glasses. Then he went back to reading his newspaper. I nodded, smiled, and quickly went back to coach, embarrassed that I had given it a second try.

But not everyone forgot me from the Bobby Doyle days. Liza Minnelli and I first met there and then later on, as my career blossomed, we’d bump into each other at one event after another. Along the way we became social friends, and when I was in L.A. in the mid-1980s, she invited me to a party at her home in Beverly Hills.

I showed up at this flashy Hollywood affair and immediately felt like a fish out of water. These were Broadway people, people who knew everything about Liza’s famous mother, the great Judy Garland, and her equally famous father, Vincente Minnelli, the Academy Award–winning director of classic film musicals like
Meet Me in St. Louis
and
An American in Paris
. I knew a little about Liza’s mother and father but otherwise was a country singer in a Broadway world. They were all very nice, of course, especially Liza.

At one point I noticed a frail little man sitting alone in the corner. He was all alone but didn’t seem to mind it. As I started to go introduce myself, a group of partiers came in, immediately surrounding him and treating him like the pope. This was Hollywood royalty, no doubt about it.

Liza came by, grabbed my arm, and said, “Have you met Vincente?” She walked me over to meet her legendary dad, explaining on the way that he was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. Like everyone, I said hello and extended my hand. He shook it, chuckled, and instantly disconnected from me, as he had with everyone else. As I turned to leave, I mentioned how much I had enjoyed his movie
An American in Paris
, and he immediately perked up. He started reliving the whole production of the movie. I had opened up a floodgate to the past, and he wanted to talk about it for the next thirty minutes. He couldn’t remember what had happened five minutes before, but he knew every detail of a movie made in 1951. I’m sure he never knew who I was—just a guy in a gray beard asking him questions—but later, when he died, the family asked me to be a pallbearer at his funeral. I was incredibly honored to do so.

And it all started with Bobby Doyle.

For someone just getting started in the music business, I was in paradise. Between gigs with Bobby Doyle and any pickup work I could find, I was making up to $800 a week, a sizable amount of money for the early 1960s. I ran right out and bought a brand-new Lincoln. People have pointed out in some articles that I had actually bought a Cadillac, but that’s not quite the story.

I did drive a Cadillac around Houston for a while in those days, but it wasn’t mine. It was borrowed from the infamous woman named Candace “Candy” Mossler. In 1964, Candy, a platinum blonde and ex-model, had been arrested for murdering her millionaire husband in his Florida condo. It was a nationwide scandal and fodder for every tabloid in existence. She and her partner/lover in this situation, her husband’s nephew, Melvin Lane Powers, were defended by a famous lawyer named Percy Foreman and acquitted of the killing. Foreman later defended Martin Luther King’s killer, James Earl Ray.

Things do get tangled up down around the coast of Texas.

Candy needed cash and her son loaned me her Cadillac with the hope I would buy it. By the time she found the pink slip two years later, I was in my new Lincoln.

“You should put your money in the bank and buy a Chevrolet,” my mom advised, forgetting that I already had had a Chevy that was repossessed in high school. I loved those flashy cars, but also figured that if I drove one to a club to negotiate a salary with an owner or a promoter, it would make me look good by appearing successful. At that stage of my career, I was convinced that what you had was sometimes not as important as what people thought you had.

Of all the people who stopped in to see the Bobby Doyle Three at the Showbiz, the luckiest break for me came in the person of Kirby Stone, a trombone player who fronted a group called the Kirby Stone Four. Kirby was a mediocre trombone player who made up for it by being a great entertainer and by finding very good musicians to work with.

Kirby traveled with musicians on guitar, accordion, and drums, but since his music spanned big band and pop, he needed a larger band and picked up extra players wherever he was booked. He had hit the national charts with a song called “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” which meant he got a lot of bookings—good bookings. He was a name.

In 1961, about three years after I started playing with Bobby, Kirby happened to hear us at the Showbiz one night and was so impressed that he came back every night that week. He especially loved Bobby’s voice, which sounded a little like a Ray Charles vocal. Kirby thought our drummer, Don Russell, had a Sinatra-type sound, whereas my own voice was high enough and versatile enough to do many kinds of material. There are some groups, like the Bobby Doyle Three, which are made up of singers who can play. Kirby took us under his wing because he needed more versatility in his band. He liked to take show tunes and make them into pop or big-band songs.

Teaming up with Kirby was an opportunity for the Bobby Doyle Three to be heard by audiences all over the United States and Canada. With every appearance with Kirby, and endless hours of rehearsal with Bobby, my bass playing got better. Kirby was the lead, and the band backed him up. For twenty minutes of every show, we, the Bobby Doyle Three, would be featured on our own. Then Kirby, the main attraction, would come out and we’d be part of the backup band. We played a lot and learned a lot about harmony, arrangement, and stage performance. I carried all of these things with me as I later moved from genre to genre.

Kirby took us to New York to record the inaugural Bobby Doyle Three album, and we stayed at his house in Paterson, New Jersey, throughout the process. It was a jazz album with standards including “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “I Got Rhythm.” As it turned out, we played on very little of the record. Most of the music was played by a big band Kirby brought in. We were certainly not studio musicians, and at the time Kirby recorded the Bobby Doyle Three, that’s how things were done. It’s been reported that I felt the album didn’t work because bringing in outside musicians was a mistake. I don’t know if I ever said anything like that, but it is doubtful.

The album,
In a Most Unusual Way,
was released on Columbia Records in March 1962. It produced nothing that made any waves, so we then signed a deal with the Houston label Townhouse and sent a song called “Don’t Feel Rained On” to radio. Once again, the release didn’t go anywhere. Kirby had good bookings, and we came with the package, so we kept working whether we had a hit record or not. I was a gainfully employed, twenty-three-year-old jazz bassist and loving it.