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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 12, 1996 -- Kenny Rogers is well aware that the days when his singles were like helium balloons on the charts -- when songs like "Lady" or "Islands In the Stream" would spend as many as four months hovering in the nether reaches of the pop Top 40 -- are long gone.
Back in the late-'70s and early-'80s, it seemed that the silver-maned country-pop balladeer could do no wrong. His carefully-honed formula of country songs that appealed to a pop audience and pop songs that appealed to a country audience sold hundreds of millions of copies. He parlayed the simple stories they told into TV movies based on songs like "The Gambler" and "Coward of the County," in which he played starring roles. And he made the most of the romantic duet formula, scoring hit after hit with female vocalists including Kim Carnes, Sheena Easton, Dolly Parton and Dottie West.
Those days are long gone. It's been over a decade since Rogers commanded the sort of commercial clout that had pop musicians like Lionel Richie and the Bee Gees clamoring to work with him -- the former wrote and produced "Lady" and the latter did the same for "Islands In the Stream."
But for Rogers -- who performs on Saturday, June 13, at the National Music Center in Lenox at 4 and 8 -- it's all just a question of the right positioning and marketing.
"Success is a way of life," said Rogers in a recent phone interview from Athens, Ga. "You have to just kind of take it for what it is and ride the wave and just know that you can't stay there forever, and be just as happy when you're in one of the lulls, and try to find a way to keep your career going until music recycles and is ready for the type of stuff that you're capable of doing."
Rogers said he isn't discouraged by his recent lack of chart hits. "I'm not at the top and I'm not at the bottom, I'm on my way up," he said. "We have some really good things going on at the end of this year that I think will give me another shot at it, and that's what our goal is. If you can stay at bat, you have a chance for a hit. I'm just trying to stay at bat right now."
Along those lines, Rogers is employing an innovative strategy to recapture his lost market share. Eschewing the standard record company - - over the years his singles and albums were put out by top labels like Liberty, RCA, Reprise, Atlantic and United Artists -- Rogers recently signed a deal with Magnatone, the company that owns the QVC home shopping network, which released his most recent album, "Vote For Love," on its own onQ label.
"They really want to do things right, and they know how to market beyond just radio," said Rogers, who can sound more like a marketing consultant than a country singer. "So what we try to do is to structure something that is unique in its presentation and that will be available on the QVC home shopping channel as well as in record stores as well as in places where you might not have seen records before.
"It's multiple-level marketing. It's where everything's going, and these people are the front-runners in it."
For Rogers, using the sort of business strategies you learn in school to sell songs is nothing new. "When I first started out, I would sing country music that would sell pop, hoping to attract a larger audience," he said. "Then as I kind of crossed over and became really a pop artist, I started doing pop records that would sell country. That way you capture your larger audience."
In the process, said Rogers, he made so many albums and singles that "I don't even remember them all."
The most difficult thing he ever did, said Rogers, was leaving his native Houston. "It was a huge deal for me, because I was making a lot of money there when I was young, but I knew that I was destined to be a local musician if I didn't get out of there. Then I had an opportunity to join the New Christy Minstrels and be a smaller fish in a bigger pond."
The move wasn't without its price. "It was brutal," said Rogers. "I had a family, and it ended up costing me my family. But there are times in your life where you have to....Successful people have instincts on when to move, and you usually move when you're at a peak somewhere, as opposed to when you're at the bottom of the wave, so to speak, because you have more leverage when you're at the top."
Such calculation leaves some conflicted about their success. "You never quite feel you deserve it," said Rogers, who comes from very humble beginnings, having grown up in a public housing project. "In my case, I tried to do a lot of charity work, I tried to give a lot of money back to the communities, and that helped me with dealing with what I considered to be guilt for my success. And in doing so I think I made my life even richer."
[This article first appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 12, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.]
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