HE was as much a legend for his love of women as he was for the hit songs that made him a global superstar who sold 120million albums worldwide.
And the death on Friday of Coward Of The County country music icon Kenny Rogers aged 81 marked the end of an epic life that featured three Grammys, five wives — and a phone sex scandal.
One of his greatest songs, Islands In The Stream, was a 1983 duet with fellow country music legend Dolly Parton and people always saw electricity between them. But there was never any romance. Instead, they became life-long friends.
Kenny joked of their relationship: “I’m a believer that tension is better if you keep it than if you satisfy it. And then secondly, she said no to me!
“Everybody thought we were having an affair but we didn’t. We just flirted with each other for 30 years.”
Dolly later said: “I’m not his type. We are almost like brother and sister. So we just never went there.”
Kenny’s music career spanned more than 60 years and included 1977’s Lucille, Coward Of The County in 1979, which were both UK No1s, Lady in 1980 and 1983’s We’ve Got Tonight, with Sheena Easton.
He once summed up his global popularity by saying: “I do ballads that say what every man wants to say and that every woman wants to hear.”
The lyrics, combined with his gravelly voice, led him to become one of the most successful country-pop crossover acts and the tenth best selling artist in history in terms of album sales.
He had 20 No1 singles from 1977 to 1987 and was inducted into Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013, getting a lifetime achievement award and playing the Legends slot at Glastonbury the same year.
Alcoholic father
He once said: “You either do what everyone else is doing and do it better or you do what no one else is doing and you don’t invite comparison.
“I chose that way because I could never be better than Johnny Cash or Willie (Nelson) or Waylon (Jennings) at what they did.
“So I found something I could do that didn’t invite comparison to them.”
While on paper he would appear to have been less of a success when it came to marriage, Kenny remained philosophical, saying: “Every woman I married, I really loved when I married her.
“And I don’t blame them for the marriage falling apart. I blame myself and my chosen field of music.
“That’s why I say that music is a mistress, because you can’t wait to get out there to it, and usually the mistress wins in a situation like that.
“That’s kind of what happened to me. Hey, you can’t say I’m afraid of commitment. I’ve been married five times.”
Kenny married first wife Janice Gordon on May 15, 1958. In his 2012 memoir Luck Or Something Like It he revealed that the first time they had sex, Janice got pregnant with their daughter Carole, which led him to marry her.
He said: “I loved her. At 19 I thought, ‘This is OK with me’. Her parents thought I’d ruined her life and were determined to break me.
'The marriage didn't work'
“The marriage didn’t work and it’s sad, because I think it could have.”
They divorced in 1960 and Kenny wed Jean Rogers in October that year. They divorced three years later.
In October 1964 he married Margo Anderson — and this time it lasted for 12 years and they had a son, Kenny Jr, now 55, before divorcing in 1976.
Marriage number four was to TV actress Marianne Gordon, who Kenny wed on October 1, 1977. They had a son, Christopher Cody Rogers, now 37, but they split and divorced in 1993.
Finally, in June 1997, he married his “soulmate” Wanda Miller, 52, who, despite a 28-year age gap, he described as the love of his life. They had twin boys, Justin and Jordan, now 14. He said: “She’s 28 years younger than me, and I say this from the bottom of my heart — she is my soulmate.
“She loves me better than anyone else has known me. She loves what I do and I’m not as insensitive to her needs as I may have been in the past.”
Before he finally found true love, Kenny’s personal life was wild, to the extent that in the 1980s he even set up a special number for women to call so he could have phone sex with them — a scandal that threatened to ruin his career at the time.
He later said: “I thought that phone sex was the safest sex there was, only to get hammered by it. It was great, it was exciting, it was fun.”
By then Kenny had enjoyed years of fame and fortune, though his success had not come to him on a plate.
His childhood was tough, with an alcoholic father, and he was raised in social housing with seven brothers and sisters.
It had a lasting effect on him and led him never to touch a drop of drink. He went on to work with charities including the Red Cross and MusicCares, as well as being part of the 1985 all-star We Are The World recording for famine relief.
