Ken Kragen

Uber-manager Ken Kragen, who steered the careers of Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Trisha Yearwood, Olivia Newton-John, the Bee Gees, the Smothers Brothers, Travis Tritt, Gallagher and more, sadly just passed at 85. After Kenny Rogers died in 2020, Ken did a podcast with me about Kenny that was never aired. In fact, it's more about Ken than Kenny, so in tribute to him I am posting it now. If you're interested in going deeper, you can listen to my podcast with Ken about his life and career posted on September 12, 2019.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is long time and the manager of
Kenny Rogers, Ken Craigan, here to tell some Kenny Rogers tales.
Jan How you do it? Just great, terrific sadly losing
Kenny March. Since that time, there's been so much outpouring

(00:29):
of love all of the world for him, it's quite heartening. Okay,
So how did you meet Kenny? You know, I first
met Kenny way way way back in the early sixties
when I was managing I think probably the Smothers Brothers
in those days, and I went to Houston and DJ
there and his wife took me to a little jazz
club and he was playing bass with a Bobby Doyle trio,

(00:53):
and Uh, I was introduced to him. I didn't think
anything of it at the time. Number of years went by.
He joined the Christie Minstrels, the New Christie Minstrels, and
I went on and was producing the Smothers Brothers comedy
show and a lawyer kept calling me, called me six
straight weeks and pushed me to go see a group
at a club called Ledbetters in Westwood here and uh, finally,

(01:18):
I was very busy with the show, and but I
finally went down there and I just flipped for him.
In fact, I brought Tommy Smothers the next night and
within a week they were appearing on the Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour. Just because I'm interested in club history, tell
me about Ledbetters. Where was it in Westwood? Lad Petters
was on Westwood Boulevard And it was owned by the

(01:39):
guy who was the head of the New Christie Minstrels.
Oh gosh, I'm blanking on the name now, he's very
well known U but but he had he owned that
club and the first edition we're just playing there, and
they were playing there for a couple of weeks, and
I went in there almost every night for a while.
They were runned by a gorgeous, gorgeous uh lady, young

(02:04):
woman by the name of Thelma Camacho, and then other
people in it. Kenny was playing stand up bass. He
was quite a bit older than the other members. They
had all left the New Christie Minstrels because Mike Settle,
who was a writer, he couldn't get the Christie Minstrels
to do any of his songs, so he formed this
group from the Christie Minstrels, and they started singing songs

(02:27):
that Mike had written. So you go to see them,
and he get Tommy to come. How long after that
till they get on the telecast probably a week We
well we were a live show on you know, on
Sunday nights. I mean well, when I say live, we taped.
We taped and then went out. But uh, but it
was kind of amazing. I mean literally a week later

(02:49):
they were on the show. Everybody fell for them, and
uh and more than one of us, uh fell for Thelma.
In fact, I think she started dating Mason Williams, who
was the writer on the show at the time. Of
course we had classical gas later, right, Yeah, it was
quite quite an era. Did they already have just dropped in?

(03:11):
You know? I don't know. I think that came along later.
They didn't. Mike didn't write it. Mike was with the
group for the first year and a half or two,
and then he left because his wife gave him an ultimatum.
She said, either you know, you stay at home and
we have a relationship here you're always on the road,
or we don't have a marriage and I'm leaving. So

(03:32):
I ran into him about a year or two later
on in l A. And I said, Mike, so, how
did it work out? I know, you know, he said, well,
my wife and I we went for therapy, went for
couples therapy. He said. I said, well, so did that work?
He said, no, no, it didn't work. But boy did
I get great ideas for songs, but he was left
out of the first editions. Out of the first edition

(03:54):
by that point, and the song how did you become
the manager? You know? I started managing virtually right away.
I had other clients. I had other clients at the time,
although the Smothers were certainly the major one, and and
I took them on, and they didn't have any real
hits at that point. Their first album out wasn't out yet.

(04:14):
They had they have a previous manager that you uh not,
that took over phone because they had just come it
hadn't been that long since they came out of the
Christie Minstrels, and and so I I got to manage
them right from the beginning. I remember one of the
first things I booked for them was a little club
in Boston and we went there and we would have

(04:36):
like six or eight people was in a basement in
Boston and we would have maybe six to eight people
in the audience at night. And one of those nights
that one of the smother shows that they taped was on.
So I brought a TV set and put it on
a stool on stage and the group came down into
the audience, which doubled the audience by the way, and

(04:59):
we all watched the show on the stage. It was
very funny. But uh, but they you know, they didn't
they started having a few hits. Throw a little bit
slower than that. Okay, you have the act, you signed them,
you put them on the Smothers Brothers show in that
era of the sixties mid sixties. Did that immediately mean

(05:20):
they had traction or did you were starting at the Actually, uh,
it was you know, remember there were three networks we had.
Um you know, Bonanza had been the number one show
in America and we've been they've been shows have been
for eight years. Trying to knock it off. CBS had
tried everything and nothing worked, Absolutely nothing worked. So they

(05:45):
threw our show on, figuring nothing was going to happen
with it, and we exploded. And you know it was
Vietnam and it was protesting, and it was young people,
and we were all young and you know, I mean
I was wearing beads and piece meals and long hair
in those days, and and we related to that young

(06:06):
audience out there. And all of a sudden the show
became a big hit, and we literally knocked Bonanza out
of number one and went to the number one show
in the country every week and uh, and we had
just great pieces on that show. I we were talking
any other night about UH. We had a bit called
have a Little Tea with Goldie and Um. She would

(06:28):
come on each night and go and it was all
drug references. But the network, despite the fact they censored
the show highly, they never got the drug references. She
opened her bit, uh with UM. She'd say, I want
to agreet all you women the way I always do high,

(06:49):
you know, and oh, I appreciate all of you sending
me her old roaches that you've gathered around the house.
Stuff like that. They would we get away with murder
on it. We even put on the Smother show, which
was getting from about the first end of the first
couple of months, it started getting censored, or at least

(07:10):
but a censored. The CBS guys would take the script
and look at it and say, you can't say you
can't say this. We would put four letter words in
the script that we knew they were going to immediately
knock out. And then they missed the next joke which
which was a double, which had a double and dundre
to it, and was kind of was what we really
wanted to get across. It was like a fun game

(07:31):
all the time up until the end. So you have this, uh,
the Kenny Rogers and the first additional that was just
called the first edition on the Smothers Brothers. Do they
have a record deal at that point? Yes, they did
at Warner Brothers. Uh. Terry Williams, one of the member's
mother was working at Warner Brothers and and they got
a deal at Warner Brothers. A producer and later went

(07:54):
on to be very successful and they Mike Post came
in produced some terrific songs for them, and songs started
happening when they had that deal. That was before you
got involved. Uh, yes, they had some kind of deal.
I didn't make the deal at Warner Brothers. I remember
we got the first album and they weren't happy with
the cover and a lot of other stuff. It was
almost you know, like the movie Spinal Tap, uh, you

(08:19):
know when the group gets the album and hates it. Um.
But you know that just dropped in certainly was the
biggest break we got in those days, just just to
go back. So Mike Post, who ultimately this is the
same guy, became famous for writing all the TV themes. Yeah, yeah,
all the themes for television shows, and it's what degree
was an integral part of the success of I think

(08:39):
he was a major success in those early days with
the hits you know, Ruby, Don't Take Your Left to
Town and and all of the various hits that came
out of the first edition. Uh, in that early early
period where Mike Post and and I do think it's
funny you mentioned just dropped in. I think just dropped

(09:01):
in to see what condition my condition is in is
a perfect song for today. I love that record. First
was aware of Kenny Rogers, but of course everybody then
thought they were some kind of you know, super hip group,
and they were as straight as an arrow, you know,
in those days, they didn't touch anything, and that was

(09:22):
a big hit on the on the East Coast. How
did you make it a hit. You know, it's a
good question. I think that record really made the group
a hit more than we made that record hit. And
many times over the years, I've worked radio very very hard. Um,
I think the only thing we did basically to try

(09:43):
and support records was travel and and and do shows
all over the country and visit radio stations, and do
you know, it was all radio at that point, UM
and UM and I had there's a kind of a
wild part of the story that you get a kick
out of. When I first came out of Harvard Business
School in the in nineteen sixty uh, I was managing

(10:06):
a group called the Lime Lighters, and I took their
record into a radio station, w b Z in Boston
and the music director and the sort of librarian music
director was Joe Smith. So by the time we got
to the Warner Brothers deal, he you know, he and
Mo Austin were the gold Dust Twins or the co

(10:27):
the co heads of Warner Brothers Records. So I had
a relationship there which was great. In fact, at one
point I had five acts on their label that We're his.
So uh just dropped in becomes a success and what's
the next move? Well, the group starts playing concerts everywhere
and doing very well for a few years, and one

(10:47):
song after another, Ruben James I mentioned Ruby Don't Take
Your Love to Town. The big change came about almost
two years into it, or a year into the group
um when Uh we had one record out that was
doing okay on the charts and they wanted to put
out it might have been Ruby, Uh and Kenny was

(11:11):
lead lead vocalist. I don't remember the exact record, and
I had a meeting at Warner Brothers with Moe and
Joe and everybody there and decided that the best way
to put the second record out was called Kenny Rodgers
in the first edition for the second record, and that
stuck because of that record went on to be a
huge hit. So it was either Ruby or just dropped in.

(11:33):
It was one of those, and the rest of the group,
you know, they accepted it, although it wasn't. I mean,
they didn't fight among each other ever really, but but
I'm sure that Terry Williams and some of the others
in the group felt a little bad at first that
suddenly Kenny was the front guy, because you know, he
was kind of he was the bass player and an
older guy in the group, the oldest by by a

(11:56):
long shot, trying by the way to look hip. He
was in dark glasses and letting his hair grow and
doing everything he could to look as him as possible.
So how long did it run with the first edition?
It runs to about nineteen seventy five, And I'll never forget.
The last engagement was at Magic Mountain, very depressing for

(12:19):
a group that had been drawing big audiences all over
the world. Actually this is an amusement park in southern California. Yeah, yeah,
and uh, and that was they broke up right after that.
H Kenny was at that point sixty five million dollars
in debt, had gotten a divorce, was or at least
it was in the process of it, and it was

(12:41):
pretty downcast. However, he uh, you know, he had met
Mary Ann, who was who became his wife. Ultimately he
met her in Nashville doing he aw and he spent
a lot of time in Nashville, and a manager from there,
sort of a manager guy offered him, uh, what he

(13:04):
offered him was seven fifty thousand dollars to come down
there and let him manage it. H Kenny never saw
but a fraction of that money, a very tiny bit
of it, and it didn't That didn't work out, So
he'd ultimately moved on from you. At the end of
the first edition. Yeah, he left. I was kind of broke,
and I went and joined Jerry Weintrop's office, and Kenny,

(13:27):
in the meantime went to Nashville. So did the band
blame You've, because usually the manager gets blamed when the
band is not doing that well. I've I've rarely had that.
I hate this, I mean not hate to say it.
You lose artists because one of two reasons. You lose
them because you didn't do a very good job and
they're disgruntled and unhappy, or you lose him because you

(13:49):
did a very good job and they think I don't
need to be paying him all that money. I lost
TRICI yearwo over that, over over how much I was making.
She was making several times maybe ten times what I was,
but she was I was making a commission of maybe
fifty thousand at that point, almost a million. And you

(14:10):
take a look at that. She was now with Garth,
who felt he could pretty much advisor and and she
just came to me one day and said, you're making
almost as much money as I am, but she was
looking at her net versus my gross and uh. And
we parted over that, and I had done I think
a pretty spectacular job for I've rarely lost anybody. I mean,

(14:33):
Kenny I managed for thirty three years. Well, staying with Kenny,
he goes to Nashville, it doesn't work out. How do
the two of you look back up? I signed it
with Jerry Windrab. I'm being handling Gosh the carpenters and
Harry Chapin and and doing some work for John Denver,
all Jerry's clients at a phenomenal company. And I get

(14:56):
a call from Kenny from Nashville and he's left this
guy and he suddenly wants my management back. I'm at Jerry's.
I go to Jerry and Jerry says, forget it, he's
washed up, he's nothing that's going to happen with him.
Don't sign him. But I signed him over Jerry's objection,
which lady really backfires on Jerry because Kenny, who never

(15:16):
forgets that Jerry didn't want him. Uh, And I don't
quite I doubt if I told him that, but somehow
he found that out. Anyway, I signed him and I
put him out on the road with the carpet with
the captain and to Nil and it's really interesting what
happens because they give him ten fifteen feet in front

(15:38):
of the curtain to perform. Now, remember he's been part
of a group that's been very big at one point,
and he calls me and he says, I'm so discouraged.
You know, I go out there. They really want the
headliner that you know, I'm stout there as a solo artist.
I just think I'm gonna quit this. I think I'm
gonna stop. And I spend you know, I don't know

(15:59):
how much time him an hour or something, really pumping
him up and talking to him and keeping him going.
And he stays in it. And one of the things
it does is tremendously influenced him later on when he
takes artists such as Garth Brooks on the road, and
Garth actually talked about this recently on a tribute to Kenny.
When Kenny takes artists on the road, he gives him

(16:22):
the full stage, everything I want to work with, all
the lighting, everything. He does everything he can to make
them feel as much at home at as much a
star as he possibly can. And I think it came
from the way he felt with Captain and Taniel. I
don't think that Captain Teneo really ever thought anything about it.
They probably didn't realize how it affected him, but it

(16:46):
but hey, then you know, he runs into Larry Butler
in Nashville in the pancake pantry and they he goes
to his office later and they make a deal for
a record. Okay, tell us to Larry. Tell us about
Larry Butler. Larry Butler is a producer who did Johnny Cash,
a whole slew of top artists, um uh, and he

(17:09):
was a very very prolific producer. And they record sixteen
songs together and they send them to me. I'm now
working at Jerry wide Drops office, and he has a
whole promotion department of his own music guys that go
out and promote the records with radio. And we all
sit in the conference room, on the floor of the

(17:30):
conference room listening to these sixteen songs, and we get
to one called Lucille, and we really crack up. We're
literally rolling around the floor going this is crazy, this
is and I said, this is either you know, a
dud as a novelty song or it's the biggest hit
he could have, and sure enough it turns out and

(17:51):
by the way, it was the name of his mother
when it's and what he didn't write it, and his
mother got upset because you know, it's uh, it's about
leaving her husband and and the crop and the with
the four kids and the crop in the field, you know,
and stuff. And he says, why did you do that
about me? This isn't my life. I never did that.

(18:13):
She had eight kids. But anyway, it goes on to
be a number one record, he wins, he wins the
song of the Year on the c m A Awards.
Um it becomes the real song that kicked him off. However,
I will say I tried to get the record company
to release it first off of those sixteen songs he'd recorded,
and they didn't. They released one or two others before

(18:35):
they went to Lucille. They all just felt that Lucille
was was, you know, not going to make it, that
it was too unusual and different a song. But boy,
it resonated and it it kicked the career into high gear.
It was you know, Gambler coming along later kicked it higher.
But and a lot of other things we did, which
we can talk about. But but Lucille, Okay, so Lucille,

(18:59):
now what record label is this? This becomes Liberty. I
believe we're on at that point part of the E
M I M. Yeah, part of E M I. Because
then Jim Maza came in and headed Capital, which owned
E M I, or at bought M E E M
I and so it um. But we start having hits

(19:20):
then and and one after the other. But the big
big moment for Kenny really was that Larry Butler had
recorded The Gambler, a John Schlitz song. Don was in
twenty three years old and had written a bunch of
songs that didn't go anywhere, and one of his friends
told him, Gee, you really should develop that one about

(19:41):
the Gambler, and he did, and Cash recorded it but
didn't like it that well, and so Larry, feeling Cash
wasn't going to put it out, recorded it with Kenny.
After Kenny made it an enormous hit, it was Catch
wasn't very happy that it hadn't come out. But although
Johnny Cash was a great guy to him, well, uh,

(20:03):
but you know, the Gambler really established Kenny and and
it did it for a bunch of reasons. One, he
looked the part. He fitted it. It felt, you know,
he felt like he was singing about himself almost and
h and we got an album covered done by a
fabulous photographer named Reed Miles, who h was sort of

(20:27):
the Norman Rockwell of the photo photographers. He would bring
in actors and put them around on artist and he
brought it. You know, The Gambler was based like in
the eight hundreds of the way Reid saw it, and
he put it Kenny as the dealer in the midst
of this cast of characters. And that album cover was
just sensationally good. And the song, of course, I mean,

(20:49):
you've got to know when to hold him. You've got
to know when to fold him. You gotta know when
to walk away, you gotta know when to run resonated
even to this day, people use it all the time,
even to this day. Uh and uh. And then of
course we went on to make these huge movies. So

(21:10):
tell us how the movies came about. Well, that's a
fun story. Kenny had gotten pretty big with all the
other stuff, including The Gambler, and he was now hosting
the Country Music Awards, the CMA Awards, from Nashville and
at rehearsal the day before the awards, two of the
top guys from CBS who happened to buy movies of

(21:31):
the week for the network, one being Fred Rappaport blanked
on the name of the other guy. They were sitting
in the green room with me while Kenny was out rehearsing,
and I had a poster of the cover of The Gambler.
Now you have to understand, I've never made a movie before.
Kenny had acted in one in some small part. Uh,

(21:51):
we had no experience, really, And I am really rolled
this poster, this big, huge poster like a movie poster,
and said we want to make this as a movie.
And the two guys sitting on the couch looked at
me and went sold, wouldn't you love to be able
to do that today? I've got We've got I've got

(22:12):
two projects out right now, and you have to go
through all kinds of hoops to get them made. But
but that it did take six months more to negotiate
a deal. But by that fall we were we were
out there making that movie in October and it went
on in November literally and uh went through the roof.

(22:34):
It became the highest rated movie in history on television,
highest rated movie four television Movie of the Week was
a two hour version. But as a result of that,
as a result of that one success where we got
like a fifty two share in a thirty five rating,
you know, unbelievable numbers nowadays except for Super Bowls and

(22:56):
other things like that. When we got these huge numbers,
we CBS got us to make four mini series after that,
and we did so, we did a total of eighteen
hours of Gamblers and uh it, you know, was just
and the second one was bigger than the first one

(23:17):
and it was a mini series. So I mean that
really established Kenny, you know, much like Dolly got established
with nine to five on a higher level, Kenny got
established with his films before well before nine to five,
Kenny was very established and one of the few country

(23:38):
stars at that time as far as I know, to
ever take that kind of leap into that huge success.
Certainly nobody else had that kind of success. And I
had a lot of fun with that boy. Every promotional
tool in my toolbook toolbox came out for promoting the Gambler.
Give us, give us some examples. Well, you know, we

(23:58):
were on the cover of TV Guy. We were and
we had we did posters that were ever we treated
it like a feature film. Uh you know, I have
that whole belief, which I think I've been on your
show and talked about before about the magic of three's.
I had didn't realize that it was a real technique
at that point, but I would surround anything with so
many different promotional things, from radio calls and promotion contests, advertising,

(24:25):
get the network to spend a lot of money on
the advertising. Piece of work closely with them on all
of those aspects. I even, by the way, on all
my films and all my TV shows, I've always shot
the stills. There's been a network film you know photographer
there too. But I know exactly what I want to
promote with. So I would go out and I love

(24:46):
taking pictures, and I would take pictures through the whole time,
give them back to the Smothers Brothers show. I took
put pictures every week, printed up the best ones and
sent them to the people who appeared on our show
in a leather bound book. Um, you know, I just
it was just part of my part of what I did.
I always felt of the job was making the film

(25:07):
still feel his way is promoting it. So how did
Canny handle all this success? That's the great thing about
Kenny rodgers um Interestingly, he would never get too high
and never get too low. He was the most even
guy that I ever knew. Changed a little later in life,

(25:29):
but not that much, but until to the last couple
of years. But we talked about that later. But in fact,
Kenny had this ability to just stay sort of level.
You know. I think one of the reasons that Gambler
is so successful is much like Kenny himself, the character
doesn't take himself too seriously. There's a lot of fun

(25:51):
in that in the movies, and my favorite film always
was Butch and Sundance, So I I think maybe although
I didn't write the script, I think I pushed for
that kind of humor to go through it along with
you know, whatever the whatever, the threat wash my face.

(26:13):
I always think the best films are ones that combine
something you can laugh at or be amused by with
with the tension of an ongoing you know thriller. Okay,
So at this level of success, are you worried about overexposure? Well,
I got a lot of flak for that kind of
thing I did, uh, And yet I just didn't worry

(26:34):
about it as long as we kept changing. That's the
one thing I've always done in my career is find
what is the real person, what their interests are, and
find ways to make those work. I remember living in
john when she got pregnant. I remember telling her, do
an album of U of lullabies, and after the baby

(26:55):
is born, you can go on TV and talk about
how you put your kid together to sleep with the lullabies,
and you've got an album of him so other people
can do it. And she said, by god, you're the
only guy I know made getting pregnant a career event.
But I would do that with Kenny. He was a
phenomenal photographer, I mean world class, and you know we
we put his pictures up in New York and in

(27:18):
uh film galleries, I mean in this you know, art galleries,
and Time magazine covered it and we did. Uh. He
was a terrific tennis player and ended up actually getting
ranked as a doubles player, traveled with a pro who
later became one of his best friends, and anything he
did and I and I saw an interview the other

(27:39):
day with him about that. He said The one thing
I seemed to be able to do is uh, and
is focus totally. Uh. It's a combination of focus and
being addictive, you know, if photography was it. He had
a dark room and he was in there. In fact,
he had vocal trouble as a result of the used
working so much in a dark room with the chemicals. Uh,

(28:02):
and he had to stop doing that. And of course
later on everything became digital. But each whatever. His passion
was golf. I mean, you know, he bought a place
in Athens, Georgia, uh, and he built it was about
acres and he built a golf course that looked like
Augusta with lakes and bridges and everything. And he had

(28:25):
pros come down there and play it. And not only
did they come and play it, but he had a
thing that would pick could dig up trees or create
soundtraps while you were at lunch, so where he'd see
where they were. Yeah, I know, it's typical where he'd
see where everybody was hitting when you came back out
after lunch to play. And this was a lot of
times with pros. He he had moved things around on

(28:47):
the course. It wasn't the same course you just played
in the morning. Uh he just you know, anything he did,
he did it classy, first rate. He built houses, he
did all the planning and decoration. He you know, he
nailed up stuff himself and worked on the on the
walls and unbelievable. He was completely dedicated to whatever his

(29:12):
passion was at that moment in time. And by the way,
if it was a woman, he was completely dedicated there.
You could would be on the set saying quick making
calls to Marianne and you know, and we got to
get you back to work. I mean literally, whatever he
was focused on, he was truly focused well staying with
the women. He was married multiple times, five times. Why

(29:34):
do you think that was Well, the first one was
one of those. Had to get married. He felt he
got a woman pregnant while he was in high school,
I believe, and he felt the honorable thing he was
living in Houston, Texas was to marry her, and he
did and that didn't last long. But they had a
kid and and he didn't see that kid for like
eighteen years because they after they broke up and uh,

(29:58):
finally finally got back together. It was quite a reunion.
In the meantime, he got married again. And had Kenny Jr.
A very funny, clever young man. Uh and Uh. And
then when that marriage broke up, Um he met Mary
Anne and they had what had been that one of

(30:19):
his longest marriages at that point. She was still even
to this day. I mean, she loved Kenny greatly even
after they divorced, and she worried about him, and she,
like a year ago she called me and said, he's
kind of down because he doesn't work. Now we've got
to do something for his birthday. I mean, this is
his ex wife. She was wonderful about it. And then
he eventually met um a much younger woman, Wanda, Uh, gorgeous,

(30:43):
beautiful twin, and they had twins. And now there are
sons that I think around thirteen or fourteen years old
UM with Wanda, and that's one of the shames of
Kenny passing away. But they're certainly given getting to see
I mean, there have been at least five beautes to
Kenny in the last two weeks. Um. The sons are

(31:04):
at least going to have this great legacy to know
what a sensational person their father was. So why do
you think do you have a laundering eye or why
did these relationships always end? You know, it's very hard
to keep these relationships going when you're on the road
full time. I've learned a lot about the road because
I've toured speaking an awful lot, and it's almost it's

(31:28):
a performance what I do. And uh, and you go
back to your hotel room alone and it's lonely and such.
And for the first several years with mary Anne, she
traveled with him, and then they had Christopher, their son,
and she stayed home. And when she stayed home, Um,
he eventually I think had a relationship with one of

(31:50):
the women that was touring with him. Uh, and it
kind of broke up their marriage. Uh, But but they
stayed extremely close, you know, with a son that they
both cared a great deal about. Um. Kenny was I
have to say, I mean, Kenny was one of the
most generous human beings I've ever known in every way,

(32:10):
shape or form. And he maintained relationship Marianne was married
when he knew or to a fellow named Michael true Killis,
and he felt after Marianne left Michael to Mary Kenny,
he felt obligated and they became very good friends. He
even had Michael produce a movie. He just was that
kind of guy. The band and the crew was with

(32:33):
him for forty or fifty years, the same group. Uh
he he. You know, he was just one of those
people that cared about taking care of others and and
I think we have to remember that part of him.
The other part of him, of course, is to remember
the humor. I love one story. After things were slowing down,

(32:54):
he called me one day and he said, you know, Ken,
I feel like we're two old salmon's swimming up the
stream against the water and we're having a very tough
time of it. And I said, no, no, no, Kenny.
You know, my theory is, it's like a small plane.
You know, if you get up to one mile, it
has a glade range of ten miles. So even if

(33:14):
you turn off the engine, you're going to glide for
ten miles. But you get up to five miles, and
now you turn off the engine, you glide for fifty miles,
or if you're ten miles, you've glide for a hundred.
I said, Kenny. The plane you're on is up so
high that even after you die, you're gonna last You're
gonna be around for a long That plane isn't going
to hit the ground for a long time after that,

(33:36):
and there was silence on the other end of the phone,
and he said to me, you know, Ken, I think
I'm planning on living a lot longer than you think.
There's so many moment He was that kind of guy,
and he and you know when he and Dolly. I
have so many great stories of Kenny with Dolly. And

(33:57):
when Kenny and Dolly first got together. I was managing
the bags at that point, and Barry Gibb wrote an
album for Kenny and they were working. But Barry's way
of working. Kenny recorded the entire Gambler album in three days.
That's the way they worked in Nashville. You went in,
you cut four or five songs that night, you went
back home, you went there the next night, you cut

(34:18):
some more, and eventually you had an album. And you know,
in those days, you could only put ten songs or
eleven on an album. He had an album. Barry was taken,
you know, weeks to do one song and they had
been working on Islands in the stream to the point
where Kenny hated it. He just said, I'm so bored
with this song and I don't like it. That much
and everything. And I think it was Barry said we've

(34:39):
got to get somebody. Why don't we get Dolly Parton?
And I was sitting in the studio and they looked
at me and said, get Dolly. Well. I knew Sandy Gallant,
who managed Dolly very well, and I knew Dolly. We
we had we had never done anything with her. But
I picked up the phone called Sandy and with an
hour Dolly was in the studio recording with Kenny. But

(34:59):
what really miss and I think it's one of the
great things I didn't do in my life, was I
didn't have film what was going on in that studio
because those two were cracking everybody up every two minutes.
I mean, there's practically nobody funnier than Dolly, improvolving, impressing,
I can't say it, um and um. And they just

(35:23):
were completely cracking us up. And it was the beginning
of this phenomenal relationship. And I can give you great
example of Dolly in her humor that I think you
really enjoy. I took Kenny and Dolly. I took actually
Lionel to Australia, flew back on a twenty four hour
turnaround and took Kenny and Dolly down there. Both acts
were touring Australia and when we got when we arrived

(35:46):
with Kenny and Dolly, there was a press conference and
was I think or maybe two in that period of time. Anyway,
it was when the Americ's Cup, the sailing uh contest
was going on in Australia and Uh the new the
media at this press conference said Ms. Parton, what do

(36:08):
you think of the America's Cup? And she stood out,
stood up, thrust out her chest and said, but I
am America's Cups. Well, the whole place cracked up. And
here's the thing. The next day. The next day the
head like front page, the huge picture of Dolly with

(36:30):
her chest threw us out and the line I am
America's Cups huge headline down below in the story. Kenny
got one little, tiny paragraph and he was a bigger
deal there. We we had to her there before and
been big and Dolly got all the media. I mean,
she did that to us over and over and over.

(36:52):
She's one of the funniest ladies and fortunately still still
doing it, you know, and and and entertaining people to
this a I think they're going to do another nine
to five movie, by the way, she and so how
do you end up getting? Uh? The Gibbs involved were
very GiB involved with Kenny. You know. Somehow we ended

(37:13):
up taking them on. I don't know who contacted us
about that, but they were brought to me. You know,
in the mid eighties, I had eighteen months where I
had forty eight percent of the top ten records in
America were my artists, people like Kim Carnes, Kenny Rogers,
Linel Ritchie, Lindsey Buckingham, the Jay Giles Band, uh and

(37:35):
uh and so over an eighteen month period, I had
of the top ten records in Billboard, so number one.
That put me on the map. Then I did We
Are the World, which Kenny of course participated in Evaly
and hands crossed America somewhere in that period. After We
Are the World, Uh, the Bigs came to us. You know,

(37:59):
things have quiet and down quite a bit for them.
I flew down to Florida and met with him. We
took them on. We never got a lot going, but
they ended up Uh, we ended up having some fun
times with them and uh, and they ended up recording
with Kenny and other things. How did that come together.
How did they get hooked up with Kenny? Because I

(38:20):
was representing him and Kenny was. You know, he had
gotten Lionel to do Lady for him, which was wonderful
and one of his biggest help. That happened because Jim
Mazy was running the record company, running Capitol and then
and Live and overseeing Liberty h Kenny went to him
because Kenny had number one records on the pop on

(38:40):
the pop charts as well as the country charts, but
the only other chart in those days was the R
and B chart. So Kenny said to Jim, I want
to get a number one record on the R and
bea chart And Jim said, well, there's only one guy
who ought to write at He's a group called the
Commodore is in its Lionel Ritchie and either Kenny was

(39:00):
appearing in Vegas or Lionel was. I've heard the story
both ways. Uh. But they got together in Las Vegas
and Lionel, as he tells the story, um, he had
a song he called Baby and but in typical of Lionel,
he did this when he wrote We Are the World,
he only had that word and music for the song.

(39:25):
So Kenny said, I want to get a song, but
Kenny had been talking. The way Lionel tells the story,
he says, Kenny had been constantly talking about what a
great lady mary Anne was, and I heard the story.
Marianne was along with him, but he kept talking about Marianne.
And finally he said, Lionel, what do you have in
the way of a song? And Lionel, thinking on his feet,
said I've got this song Lady, which is of course Baby,

(39:49):
that he had already written the music for, but add
no lyrics, and he sang baby, Da Da Da Da
da dad and played it. Kenny said, where's the rest
of it? He said, don't worry. When we get ready accorded,
I'll have it. And Kenny said, okay, we'll do it,
and they went in the studio. It did much like
Barry's recording of Kenny. It drove Kenny a little nuts

(40:10):
because Lionel was used to even taking more time. I mean,
Kenny said, you know, with Lionel, you'd record a single note.
If he didn't like the way the note sounded, you
do the note over and over. So it was quite
an experience. But Lady was a phenomenal record for Kenny
and Lionel does it in the show. Now. So, having

(40:38):
all this success with the Gambler, with Islands in the
Stream and now with Leady, how do you keep it going?
You keep it going by diversifying, doing different things, finding
you ways, you know, making all of a sudden, getting
a lot of coverages of him as a photographer and
so on. And it started to slow down as we
got into the nineties. You know, he wasn't having I

(41:00):
think seven was his last number one album on the
country charts and uh and or even maybe it was
a single at that point. And we tried. We we
did get uh a few things through the nineties, but
mostly we started touring a lot around the world. I
was amazed how much following he had, not just in

(41:24):
English making countries that how much success he had, uh,
but in the English countries, you know, New Zealand where
he was like a superstar, Australia, uh, South Africa, which
we got criticized for for playing uh like a lot
of other artists who signed did it naively as we
were um. Uh. We did a lot of touring, you know,

(41:48):
we did the Muppets in England, we did uh. You
just you you constantly looked for angles and new things.
I never got involved in the writing of the music,
but if you give me the song, I figured out
a way. I mean, by the time the late nineties
we had we we suddenly had new new success. He

(42:09):
did a song called the Greatest and it was about
a little boy in a baseball bat and a baseball
and the kid throws the ball up in the air
and swings once and misses, and it doesn't discourage him,
and he picks the ball up, and he throws it
up again, and he swings and misses, and finally he
takes the ball for the third time and he throws

(42:30):
it up in the air and he swings and he misses,
and his mom calls him in for dinner, and as
he's walking into dinner, he says, I never knew I
was the greatest pitcher on earth anyway. Uh, it's a Kenny.
That's the gist of the song. It's more elaborate than that.
What I did was I took Kenny to ballparks to

(42:53):
open the season in all the different ballparks. The song
came out in April or the late at late March
early April, and and different teams had different opening days
or sometimes we meant more than one park in a day.
And he did not that he didn't like doing the
national anthem, but he do America the Beautiful or something,
and he do the song. And we launched it by

(43:15):
going around and touring ballparks and also by making hundreds
of calls to radio. Both what he did with radio
and I literally became I was very very I had
been president of the Country Music Association and then of
the Academy of Country Music, which is based out here
in l A. And I made hundreds of radio calls

(43:36):
and I did that not just on Kenny. I did
it on my other artists as well. But there weren't
managers calling radio, and radio was still the thing then.
We hadn't gotten to the period of streaming and getting
your music from Spotif the Greatest becomes a big success,
how do you capitalize out? Pretty good, but it doesn't
go top ten, it does it becomes a success, it

(43:57):
stops somewhere in the teens, you know, fifteen or sixteen
something like that, my recollection, But it's still a hit
for him, and the biggest hit he's had in a
number of years. And we follow it with a song
he found called by Me a Rose, and that song
UH really hits home, particularly with women. And so I'll

(44:21):
remember what happened with it again. You give me the song,
I'll find a way to promote it. I was driving home.
I somehow knew Mary Ann Williamson, who was producing the
and I may get the name run because there's two
ladies like that, the one who was producing the show. Um,
oh God, what touched by an Angel? And uh? And

(44:44):
I from my car. I played the song for her
and her staff in a meeting in Salt Lake where
they were where they were doing the filming. And I
played it on the air and they loved it, and
and I convinced them to do an episode based around

(45:04):
by Me a Rose and Kenny guests start on it.
And the day after that aired, we sold tens of
thousands of singles and the record became a number one
hit for him. Was the one of the last big
hits he had. Of course, he also had a pretty
good hit not that long ago in the in the

(45:27):
two thousand, I don't know thirteen or whenever it was,
he and Dolly had a hit with the Old Friends,
a song that again that Don Schlitz wrote for him.
So was Kenny good or bad with money? I wouldn't
say good. He liked to spend it. He was good
if you want to look at the things he acquired,

(45:47):
from office buildings to beach houses, to the ranch in
Georgia to UH to UH two or three different airplanes,
a helicopter. UM. I remember flying Tommy Lessort at one
time on Kenny's helicopter from from Atlanta, Georgia to Philadelphia
where he had to be and he was forever our

(46:09):
buddy and our friend for doing that. He had to
get there. Um. But Kenny knew how to spend it
in wonderful ways. He had great taste. UH. He once
had an airplane size of a seven twenty seven that
had a round bed in the as you walked in,
and there was a glass enclosed area that you could
put curtains around, and there was a bed in it,

(46:30):
and then you could see like twenty people behind that
in the in the two compartments behind it. He went
all the way up to that, and then in the
latter years he worked his way all the way back
down to the touring bus. By the way, he bought
a touring bus for his mom that was funny. You
know his mom, she he said, what do you want?
He she said, I want a bus so I can

(46:51):
go on tour with you. So we bought her a bus.
Us went on the bus everywhere. It was great. But he,
you know, he knew how to spend it at the
same time, he also knew how to make it. But
it made him work. I mean, as a manager, that's
a dream. Because he's working like crazy. You don't have
to push him to get out there. Uh And and

(47:12):
money was never has never been my motivator anyway. But
but from a standpoint of an easy client, here was
one who basically to support his lifestyle, had to work
hard and uh and never never grouched about it. He
loved it. In fact, if I look at one thing,
I believe Lionel and I talked about this. The night

(47:32):
that I heard Kenny had died. I called Lionel at
midnight and we talked for quite a while. Um, you know,
I think that Kenny loved from a team being on
the road. You know, when you're out there, you get
that adulation every night, and and when it suddenly stops,

(47:52):
when you suddenly know that your health is such that
you just can't go out anymore. It's got to be
a tremendous blow. And Uh. In fact, Lionel and I
talked about it. I said, Lionel, you've got to be
prepared for that someday. He said, don't worry. I've I've
thought about it. UM. But he's still going very strong. UM.

(48:12):
And I think that the last two years after he
was forced to um to stop touring, after a lifetime
of that kind of adulation and and reaffirmation and fun,
just the camaraderie of being out with the band, um,
all the wonderful things he did on the road, taking

(48:33):
cameras along huge he took an enormous camera that had
to be carried by a couple of people in set
up to do pictures that were like you know, Richard
avedon types of things, and he was just quite amazing
at that. And then to have it all kind of
come stop, you know, crashing to a stop. Uh. Lionel
and I kind of agreed that that was the start

(48:56):
of the downhill part for Kenny and his hill and
then he, you know, his health went on him. So
you're in the office, would can he call you? Hey,
I gotta work? Uh. It was pretty mutual. One of
the things I loved about Kenny Rodgers is you could
go in there with a list I would take. Uh.
In those days, I wrote everything out. You know, I'm

(49:16):
a calligrapher, so I wrote it out kind of fancy,
and I wrote out a list, numbered list of things
that I needed to get him to approve or agree to,
or things that needed to be discussed. And it could
be two pages long, legal sucks, but Kenny would go
through them at lightning speed. Yeah, I'll do this. No, No,

(49:38):
I don't want to do this. Oh what would Frank
Sinatra do? Would Frank Sinatra do this? I don't think so. No,
I'm not going to do that. Uh. That was one
of his I heard that so often I can't believe it. Um. Anyway,
we would go down the list. If he said he
was going to do it, you could count on. You
could absolutely count that if Kenny Rodgers agree to come

(50:00):
to your thing or do this, or sing on something
or whatever it was, whatever it was, he would be there.
He never would, never would back out, in which many
artists do. Uh. You know, they want to say yes
to everybody, but then they really turned to the manager
and say get me out of this. That's the more
common thing that happens all the time. And so he

(50:24):
just did that. He was that kind of guy. And
you know, I the one thing that hadn't been talked
about enough, not not just by us, but by all
these tributes to him and everything, is how generous he was.
When I was managing Harry Chapin, and Harry was raising
money for hunger and homeless issues in America and for

(50:45):
a group called Long Island Cares UH and for a
theater in in Long on Long Island and stuff. Kenny
Lionel would raise money by going to your backyard and
performing for a thousand dollars and put to give it
to the charity, even though he made a lot more
than that in concert, but not huge, even though he

(51:05):
draw it drew very well. Uh, I said Lionel, I
think it is Harry Chapin. I'm hope I get it
right here. So Harry UH needed money, and Kenny did
a concert in which he handed at the end of
the concert, he handed Harry Chapin a hundred and eighty
thousand dollar check. And Harry Chapin was a guy that

(51:27):
you know, was always very loquacious and I said, I'd
never seen Harry ever where he couldn't get a word out.
He took that check, he looked at it. It would
have taken him more than a year, maybe two, to
raise that money for a chair with the charities he supported.
And Kenny was handing him a hundred and eighty thousand

(51:47):
dollars from one night. And it drove home a point
that I made with Harry about how the bigger he got,
the more good he could do, and we had to
spend more time concentrating on the career. And that was
really happening when just right when Harry got killed on
the Long Island Expressway. But the minute Harry went down,
Kenny picked up that torch. He created the Hunger Media Awards,

(52:12):
gave put a million dollars into an account and gave
a hundred thousand away every year to the media for
covering the issues of hunger and homelessness. We did a
big thing every year at the u N. It was
just typical of Kenny. One time, after I mean his
first got on my way to Lonald Richie's house to
get him to work on the song, which turned out
to be where Are the World? I picked up the phone,
and the first person I called was Kenny Rogers, and

(52:34):
he said, count me in whatever you're doing. Typical Okay, So,
if you had a list of two pages legal pads,
what percentage would he say yes to? You know, I
don't remember the exact percentage, but it was generally yes
more than no, maybe sixty forty. But there was this
agreement that we had. We made an agreement somewhere along

(52:57):
the line that if one of us felt passionately at something,
doing it or not doing it, whatever, as long as
we were really really passionate about it, the other person
would go along with that decision. But he added, in
typical Kenny Rogers fashion, but Ken, when I go along
with what you want, you'd better be right. And were

(53:18):
you ever wrong, sure, what would say? Well? I part
of what I teach when I teach classes or speak
to corporations is how to get caught telling the truth.
And when I was wrong or when I made a mistake,
which was more often than you know, that I would
wish I would immediately admit it because what I was
doing was building trust. I wanted to get caught when

(53:42):
I did something that wasn't in my most my best interest,
to admit because admitting it would strengthen my relationship with him.
And I've taught that technique to people that you you
tell the truth as a valuable tool. So sure, mean
I made plenty of mistakes. I mean I'm not perfect

(54:03):
by any means and and something, but most I will
say this because Kenny could rise the occasion. This is
another story about Kenny. Basically, Kenny Rodgers had the ability
like Michael Jordan's two, raise his game when the game
was on the line and score. He wanted the ball

(54:23):
and he knew he could score, and he took his
game up to do that. And um. And the great
example of that is actually it was Kenny's uh fiftieth
birthday and I live now right across from the golf
course at Mountain Gate, and we arranged Kenny was an

(54:43):
avid golfer, and we arranged for Kenny to play with
Steve Win believe it or not, O. J. Simpson pre
uh the Trial and Murder days Uh O J. Simpson,
Steve Win and the golf pro We're playing a foursome
with Kenny. I hid around the eighteenth hole a hundred
and fifty people behind rocks and trees and everything to

(55:07):
jump out when he made the putt and yelled surprised.
Except unfortunately they got my message wrong, and when he
was about eighteen feet off the green, they jumped out
everybody and yelled surprise. Now he calmly chipped to within

(55:27):
about nine ft and sunk the putt. I looked at
him and said, you got to join the tour. This
kind of pressure really works. You know, it's so funny.
I mean he uh, he could raise whatever it was.
You listened to his duets when he had somebody's terrific
singing with him, like Sheena Easton or or Dottie West

(55:50):
who he did drunks, and they're certainly with Dolly Parton.
I saw her on an interview the other night say
he was just warming up with all those other women
waiting to get to me. And and uh when he
would raise his he loved singing duets with with talented singers, uh,
because he would then need to lift his game to

(56:12):
match them, in his view, and he would do it,
and he would do it every time. So getting success
with Kenny Rogers was certainly more frequent than not because
whatever was needed to make him successful at that moment
in time, he raised his game to deliver it. And
then Uh, there's a lot of people, like professional athletes,

(56:35):
you know, they're calm and then all of a sudden,
the lights come on and they turn it on. Was
that what it was like for him live? Or was
he what was he like just before he went on stage? Well,
I remember in Las Vegas one time where he was.
It was one of his first appearances at the Riviera.
He was headlining, and we were in the dressing room
and forty minutes thirty minutes before he ordered a dinner

(57:00):
and they delivered the dinner ten minutes before he went
on stage, and he calmly sat there eating it, got up,
maybe burped a little, and walked on stage and did
a sensational show. There was no nerves you ever saw ever.
I mean I had artists who were afraid to go
on stage. I had artists, Uh god. I remember backstage

(57:22):
in in Japan when I was touring with Lionel Ritchie
and we were and Barry Manila was on the program.
You weren't allowed to look at Barry as he went
from the dressing room to the stage. Nobody could make
eye contact or even look there. I don't know how
often that happened, but that uh, you know, there were
times where I saw incredible nervousness in people and um

(57:48):
before they went on stage, and then they got on stage,
and they used that kind of energy to do something,
you know, terrific. Uh. Kenny was just the opposite. He
was the same guy on stage off stage, you know. He.
I mean I had artists I managed who would never
go anywhere because they really couldn't stand to be mobbed.

(58:12):
Kenny Rodgers would go everywhere, but he wouldn't be mobbed
because he just acted like one of the people that
was there, you know. And he didn't like signing autographs. Uh,
but he would he would post for pictures. Uh he uh,
you know he he loved his fans. He knew how
important they were to him. But we went to movie theaters,

(58:34):
we went. He never restricted his life by being a celebrity,
and that's pretty rare. So if you would go out
shopping or go to the movie theater, would he bring security.
He had one guy that was with him for many,
many many years. Uh, whether he you know, maybe he hadn't. Yeah,

(58:55):
one guy that I remember. I don't even think he
was carrying anything. If there was real. You know at
the times were a little different through some of the
period of time. But he had once one guy who
was kind of a a close associate friend, but was
really had a police background and bodyguard kind of thing.
I never paid any attention to whether he was carrying

(59:17):
a gun or something like that. We never certainly needed it.
We did have I do remember. The wildest things that
I remember with Kenny was scary was walking. He was
walking out of the out of going off the stage
and walking through the audience into the tunnel, you know,
to go to the dressing room, and a pregnant woman

(59:40):
jumped down from from above him, you know, just as
you're going under that overhang. She she it wasn't that
high compared to where she were. He was just going
under it, but jumped on him, just came from up there,
and she was just enthusiasm. I don't think she fell,

(01:00:01):
I think she jumped. Uh. That was probably one of
the more scary moments. He used to do. A fun
thing he used to he got a a guitar case
or a large equipment case and had it built in
such a way that he could sit in it, and
he had he performed in the round for many years
because you could get more people in the theater and

(01:00:23):
he could walk around and he could connect with more people.
And he oh, he started that. He was one of
the first. He put his band in the middle and
then it was like a donut and he walked around
on the donut. Well. He arranged after a while to
be pushed in this equipment card before the as the show,
before the show was actually starting, and he was in

(01:00:43):
the equipment card, and then he would come out of
the equipment card and get on stage, come up on
stage in a cloud of smoke, so you didn't see him,
and all of a sudden, in the center of the stage,
there he was appearing. The smoke clear, and he was there,
and you never knew how he got out there. It

(01:01:03):
was great. He loves to do stuff like that, you know.
I mean that he was very adventurous, very adventurous. Did
he ever push it too far? I don't think. I
don't think so much in that area, I you know, um,
I think what he pushed too far at times were
just the elaborate way he had lived. He had grown
up in total poverty. Kenny was a part one of

(01:01:27):
eight kids living in a in a project in Houston
when they had a home. Sometimes they were living in Crockett,
Texas and in family homes and stuff. But eight of
eight kids in one room is the way he described it.
And some older than him, some younger and uh, and

(01:01:49):
they were very poor. His father Kenny's I think a
lot of Kenny's humor came from his father. His father
worked as a carpenter. But what I was told by
Kenny as the most money his father ever made was
sixty dollars and he made it during the war in
one week working at the at the docks as a carpenter.

(01:02:12):
And and his father was also an alcoholic, a friendly,
funny alcoholic, but an alcoholic, so he spent a lot
of the money on alcohol, and he didn't make much.
So it made it very, very tough on that family.
Lucio was was the backbone of that family and pretty incredible.
Did his father lived to see his success some of it? Yes,

(01:02:35):
so he did. He did live live to it. And
was he appreciative, yes, But Kenny would tell all kinds
of funny stories how he would come home and his
father wouldn't want to ask him for money directly, but
he'd go you know, if a man had a saw,
you know, an electric saw, he could build these these
little bird houses and sell them. You know, it would

(01:02:56):
be a great thing to have a really nice electric saw.
Stories like that. My my favorite story. Kenny Kenny had
a brother named Roy Rogers, and Roy played hookey from
school one day and he came home and he all
of a sudden, he saw his father coming up the
front stare stairway in the middle of the day. So
he went. Roy pulled up into an opening into the attic,

(01:03:19):
and when he got up there, he found all these
bottles hidden there. Suddenly, Roy, looking for a bottle of liquor,
comes in, opens the thing and reaches up in there
and Roy then the sun says, I can't remember now
his name for a minute, but let's say ed. He says, ed,
this is your conscience. Don't touch that music, that that liquor.

(01:03:42):
He got in a lot of trouble the kid did
for that. But uh, but it was pretty funny. Well,
speaking of valcohol, anyone who's been on the road knows
that it's very tough to have the odulation of twenty
people in an arena, then come back to your hotel

(01:04:04):
room and be with the same people week after week.
A lot of people cope with that via alcohol or drugs.
How did Kenny do on those things? For most of
his life, he really never touched alcohol. I think his
father being an alcoholic was somewhat of a lesson to him. Um.
For most of his life he was really really stayed

(01:04:26):
away from alcohol or drugs. Uh. There were some drugs
done in the group a minor retally, just smoking a
little grass or something, but not for Kenny. He didn't
touch any of that for many, many, many years, and
at least till his fifties and then really I think
at one point he had some problems with medication because

(01:04:47):
he had back and knee operations and stuff, and so
he probably had for a while. I think from what
I understand, I wasn't really handling him during that period.
But in the latter part of life, U he had
to kind of get off of opioids or whatever it
was that he was using for pain. But he just

(01:05:07):
generally that wasn't his personality, you know, he just didn't
need it and he didn't want to use it, and
it wasn't part of his life. And he never drank.
I don't think as far as I know, unless there
was something in latter years, because I haven't didn't. I
represent him for thirty three years, but that ended in
two thousand and one. And um, and although we stayed

(01:05:32):
close and talked on the phone, I never really heard
anything that would make me think he was ever drinking,
and he probably never did. Okay, what about were you
involved when he got involved with Kenny Rogers Roasters? The
chicken was that after? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that was John Y.
Brown was the governor of Kentucky. And in fact he

(01:05:52):
was married to Miss America or something right, Yeah, And
and that's how they knew him because Mary Ann knew
uh what was her name, Phyllis George. Yeah, and uh,
Mary Anne and Phillis George were very friendly. And we
ended up getting invited to the Kentucky Derby and to

(01:06:13):
stay at the Governor's mansion and the other guests that
the Governor's mansion included, uh, Walter Cronkite. I ended up
on the tennis court playing tennis with Kenny Rogers, Walter
Cronkite and Kenny's pro guy named Kelly Ankerman. Uh, And
I thought, I can't believe it. I'm here, I am
facing across the net Walter Cronk I but uh, but

(01:06:36):
John Y and Kenny became very good friends. And John
Y had this idea of creating this Roasters and he
did um and Kenny got a part of it. The
problem really was to make those things successful you have
to spend a fortune in advertising, and they never really
did that. It was going to take a very significant

(01:06:58):
amount of money. They had some success us with it.
It was a very good product. There was one in Nashville,
uh that I used to go to occasionally. Uh uh,
And and Kenny went to a lot of the openings.
He would and he would go whenever he was in
a town where there was one. He just show up
and surprise everybody. And it was a lot of fun
for a while. He never made anything off of it,

(01:07:20):
as I recalled, uh. And it finally ended up closing.
John Y after he was governor, I think moved to Florida.
They ran it out of Florida. But but you know,
it became a joke in a funny way. I mean, uh.
Seinfeld did a series where that Roasters opens up one
of his shows. One of the episodes, Roasters opens up

(01:07:43):
down below his apartment and the smell of the chicken
is went wafting up into the apartment and it's driving
them crazy, and they're trying to get rid of the roasters.
And we had a lot of fun with that one. Now,
let's make Kenny a little more three dimensional. You said
a lot of positive things, but everyone's got their positive

(01:08:03):
and negatives. What can you say to flesh amount as
a person? Was he short tempered? Could he tolerate stupidity
known as nice all the time? No? But I will
say he came about as close to that as anybody
you could imagine. He rarely got upset at anything. I
think over the thirty, over our thirty three years, the

(01:08:27):
only time he ever yelled at me or had a
problem was back in the after, just after we'd done
the first or set Gambler in the and the movie
Cow to the County, and we're about to do the
next Gambler. And he got a lawyer in town, a
big time lawyer represented studio heads and heads of agencies

(01:08:47):
and stuff. I don't remember his name. Fortunately he's no
longer with us anyway. Uh. He got this lawyer and
my lawyer, a wonderful guy named Tom Rowan, who I've
had forever, said to me, Ken, the first thing he's
gonna do is get rid of you. And sure enough,
I get a call from Kenny Rodgers and he's furious

(01:09:08):
that I have taken advantage of him by being his
partner on things like The Gambler, which, by the way,
I created and sold. I didn't write the script, but
I created the idea, sold the movie, produced every frame
of it, every aspect of it. And and the lawyer
has convinced him that because we're fifty fifty partners on

(01:09:28):
that I've taken huge advantage of him. And so now
he's yelling at me that you know that deal can't
go on ahead and and everything, and I'm calming him down.
I don't remember another time in thirty three years. I
mean I when I finally split with him, it was
we were a three way partnership with Jim Aza, the

(01:09:49):
record guy, and it was Jim who called me. I
didn't even talk to Kenny. Kenny literally was honored three
months later and apologize from stage at the Academy of
Country Music Awards on television sort of said, Ken Craigan
has been responsible for every great thing that happened to me.
In the last thirty three years. Um, you know, and

(01:10:12):
that kind of made everything up for me. Um and
uh so I really have a hard time, uh I
can you know. I've certainly had artists who were handfuls
and uh but by the way, not for long. Because
my theory is, if they're wrecking your life, move on,
If they're dominating your life, move on. I was never

(01:10:35):
ready and willing to let somebody make my life miserable
or or you know, I want to. In fact, at
one point I had a company called Ken Craigan and Friends.
It's probably the best way to think about my I'm
talking more about Kenny. Any other stories anecdotes. Do you
remember he was almost too good to be true for

(01:10:57):
a long time. He did have had He had problems
with marriages early on. One of the early things that
happened in the early beginning of the seventies was he
was married to a lady who and they fought a
lot and it was a very very up and down relationship.
And the other members of the first edition came to

(01:11:19):
me and said, you've got to talk to Kenny and
tell him that if he can't keep his personal stuff
away from the group, we're gonna have to let him
out of the group, and I did, and ultimately it
led to him getting a divorce. I don't know that
that was the motivation for the divorce because they were
having their problems, but truthfully, you never it wasn't that

(01:11:43):
he was hiding that side. I mean, I this is
a guy in that thirty three years, maybe less in
the latter years, but in those thirty three years we
were so intimately involved day and night, show after show
on the road, off the road, you know, he was.
He became such a mind. I mean I had other

(01:12:04):
big clients, a lot of Richie and others, but Kenny
was the number one client. And uh, I really had
everything to do with him constantly. So you're talking about
a lot of the great ideas you came up with.
You remember any of the ideas that Kenny came up
with or was it really more direction from you? Well,
that's an interesting thought. I'm guaranteed he came up with

(01:12:27):
plenty because he was always very creative. Um, but that's
you know, you're gonna have to I'm gonna have to
really look at that, and that'd be sure he would
take credit for ideas I came up with But I
hope I rarely took credit for ideas he came up with.
And he and he was that kind of you know person,
and he was extremely creative. Um, I don't know. I

(01:12:50):
think we didn't. We did tend to divide it up.
Where his creativity was it was most evident was in
both selecting the music the show itself. I was rarely
you know, the way he the idea of the of
the circle, the performing in the circle, of coming on

(01:13:10):
as a surprise of uh, getting the best lightering director
and the imaginable and doing things that nobody else had
done in that area. Uh So in the performance area,
in the recording area, finding the right songs, uh, you know,
tying up with duet partners. I can't ever remember bringing

(01:13:30):
him a duet partner. I would run with the product
and come up with ways to creative or promote what
whatever he was doing. But all of that stuff, the
wonderful songs, the wonderful duets, the wonderful live performances, those
were those were his his doing, really quite completely. I

(01:13:51):
just took and found ways to get those out to
the widest possible audience. So are there any stories, uh,
Kenny tales that we having covered. There's probably a hundred
of him. I should uh, I should think about you know. Um,
I was just gonna look at a list that I made.
There there were you know, there were many moments in

(01:14:13):
times that that we had fun stuff that happened. Opening
the first Gambler, Um, I was able to get Lynda Evans,
who was huge at that point. I guess it was
a dynasty that she was on. And and um, Lynda
Evans and Bruce box Lightner who was also very successful
in them as his co stars. And we get out

(01:14:36):
on the very first day shooting in Arizona and it's
a hundred and eight degrees and the first scene is
her being hanged. Uh. You know, she's being hanged and
Kenny comes through and rescues her. Um, that's the first
thing we shot. And at the and what she found immediately.

(01:14:58):
This is really kind of a good story about Kenny
because what Kenny would do was he couldn't get into
the character completely until he was in the costume and
had to deliver the lines. But he also would constantly
I want to change the lines. In fact, it got
so the director and he Dick Lowry was our young director,

(01:15:21):
and he would be sometimes sitting for an hour or
two on the set reworking the script. And the funny
part of it was he often would change a change
and change and and end up it would end him
calling all the way around to where it really originally.
Was so much so that the producers on one of
our UH specials that we did, gave him a Christmas

(01:15:41):
card and it said, you know, it said Mary Christmas,
and Mary was crossed out and said Happy Christmas, and
Happy was crossed out and said have a wonderful Christmas.
And that was crossed out on you know, for twenty
different ones, and finally the last one now not crossed
out was Mary Christmas. That was typical of Kenny and scripts.

(01:16:03):
I can remember literally typing pages while they were on
the set making changes, and I went up. I always
did whatever was necessary. It was somewhere in Arizona, and
I had a typewriter and an old beat up building
and was typing the script and having a runner run
them to the set. On the words. I was getting
that they were now doing well in any event. With

(01:16:24):
Lynda Evans, that first day, she had a lady that
worked with her, and that woman came up to me
and said, you've got to come to Linda's trailer. She's, uh,
she's crying and she's not sure she can do this movie.
And I went to the trailer and she said, you
know on the Moon when I was doing my series.

(01:16:45):
When I'm doing the series, you get the script and
you don't change a single word you were You learn
it exactly as it is, and they would not allow
you to change a word. Here Kenny's changing everything on
the set and I can't work that way. And I
a litta, but that's kind of the way he works.
And she said, well, I don't think I can do it,
And I said, just hanging there for a few days

(01:17:06):
and see, by the end of the movie she loved
it so much. She was now raving to me about
how much fun it was to work where you could
manipulate the script every day. That drove crew and dollars.
You know how much it was costing us to do
stuff nuts. But it was one of his traits that
uh he and he always told me, when I get
in the outfit and when I get on the set,

(01:17:28):
that's when I really feel like doing it another time.
By the way, one of my one of my favorite
things that he ever did was on the movie Count
of the County. He plays a preacher who's womanizing and
doing other things and he's not a good guy. He
is a good guy, but he's doing he's you know,
off the path of righteousness here. So he has to

(01:17:50):
give a sermon resigning from the pulpit and um, and
Kenny decided to go home that night and rewrite or
totally right the seram in and he came in the
next day and delivered it. And it's, I think, on
everything he's ever done, the best single piece of acting
he ever did, because it came from the heart. It

(01:18:11):
probably spoke to some of the things that were him
in real life and it was just this incredibly moving
confessional speech and uh and it ended up, I thought
being the best acting I've ever seen him do. Well, Ken,
this has been wonderful. Thanks for illuminating Kenny. How hearing
all these stories? Do you think he'll be remembering? It's

(01:18:34):
a big it's a big loss, but he lives on
in an incredible way. Right now? Do you know that?
By the way, just to end up and wrap up
and say do you know that? In the week after
Kenny died. His Greatest Hits album went to number one
on the country charts, first time since nine. His The
Gambler became the number one downloaded song in the country.
Oh in the album. The album became number six on

(01:18:55):
the Pop Truck on the Total Billboard one and The
Bumbler became number one downloaded and Islands in the Stream
number two. But people love Kenny. We love you Ken.
Thanks for doing this till next time. This is Bob
leftsas thank you.