Read Online Luck or Something Like It by Kenny Rogers - Free Book Online

paying $80 a month in child support. The divorce was hard enough, but losing Carole was extremely painful.
    Soon after, Janice married another high school boyfriend, David Billingsley, and she asked that Carole be adopted by them. She also wanted to change Carole’s name to Billingsley. I reluctantly agreed. I wasn’t happy with the decision, but I truly believed Carole would be better off with a dad in the house with her, whose name she used, rather than trying to explain where her real father was. I made a conscious effort not to create problems for their family. Consequently, my daughter and I never had a chance to really bond. I’m not sure I handled the situation in the best possible way, but I was very young and simply made what I thought was the best decision at the time.
    So that was the end of that intense, emotionally confusing teenage marriage. I have said this often: music, at least for me, is like a mistress, and she’s a difficult mistress for a wife to compete with. It took me five tries to find the right woman and get this marriage thing all worked out in my life. Looking back, I think the failure of each of my first three marriages was 85 percent my fault. If success—and I’m not talking about dollars but about professional acceptance—had been less important, I could probably have stayed with any of the three. But at the time, especially with Janice, the need to succeed was more important than holding a marriage together.
    I’ve long thought about my marriages and about being so career-driven. Just the other night, I sat up in bed and thought, You know, Kenny, there’s a fine line between being driven and being selfish. And I may have crossed that line.
     
    Even before my days with Janice were over, the Scholars had their shot at fame and fortune. Lelan arranged for us to record a tune called “Poor Little Doggie” on Jimmy Duncan’s local Houston label, Cue Records. Soon after, we recorded a follow-up, “Spin the Wheel.” Neither went very far, but they got us some national distribution. Then Lelan set up a recording deal with Imperial Records in L.A., the people who brought you Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson, among other ’50s stars. We cut a couple of forgettable tunes before we got to what would become the group’s swan song, a tune called “Kan-Gu-Wa.” This was written by the then-famous gossip columnist Louella Parsons. The idea was that if we cut her song, Ms. Parsons might help promote us through her column.
    “Kan-Gu-Wa” was as close to the big time as the Scholars got.
    The record company flew us out to Los Angeles to record. That was my very first trip outside of the state of Texas. It was quite an experience for a bunch of greenhorn kids still in high school. The label booked us rooms at a hotel and hired some of the top studio musicians in town for the sessions. In addition, we were each paid the princely sum of $150.
    “Kan-Gu-Wa” went nowhere, but the experience of being in Los Angeles, a world away from Houston, stayed with me. I knew that despite how rich the music scene in South Texas might be, everything I wanted for the future was happening in Los Angeles, California. That trip just fed my ambition to shoot for the moon.
    Like most teenage bands, even those who got the thrill of cutting records, the Scholars soon went by the wayside. One guy decided to go to college. The L.A. experience had convinced another that he should try to become a solo singer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when “Kan-Gu-Wa” flopped and the band broke up. Remember, I was never the lead singer of the group—I sang first tenor and played the guitar. But still, all I knew was that I wanted to keep singing and playing my guitar.
    Though nothing came of it, my brother Lelan succeeded in steering the Scholars from Cue, a local label, to Imperial, a national one. And though the Scholars disbanded, Lelan was sticking with me. Like a lot of promoters, Lelan himself wasn’t musical. But