Murphy Henry
(A stream of consciousness outpouring….)
Yes, I know the title is ungrammatical. The wording is a small shout-out to Lee Smith’s book Me and My Baby View the Eclipse. (Bluegrass connection, completely unintended since I mistakenly thought Clyde Edgerton wrote Me and My Baby View the Eclipse: One of Lee Smith’s recent novels, On Agate Hill, was inspired by Alice Gerrard’s song “Agate Hill,” which is a favorite of mine.) But back to Kenny Rogers….
So Kenny Rogers was playing at the Shenandoah County Fair this past Friday and I got tickets for Patty and me to go see him. (See? I can be grammatical when I want to! Although I realize, with a tinge of sadness, that today the phrase “for Patty and me” usually is spoken as “for Patty and I” which makes my skin crawl. Hello! Object of a preposition! For me, not for I. I can’t help it! My sixth grade teacher, Dorothy Black, drilled prepositions into my head so well that I can recite the nominative and objective pronouns in a heartbeat: I, you, he/she/it, we, you they; me, you, him/her/it, us, you, them. There. Grammatical digression over. Glad I got that off my chest!) So back to Kenny Rogers…
I wanted to see Kenny Rogers for one reason: to hear him sing “Islands in the Stream.” It’s another of my favorite songs. (And I will say, Marty, I was sorely disappointed not to find it on my iPod now that I’ve made it through the “I’s”.) Kenny’s duet with Dolly Parton is, IMHO, fabulous, especially with Dolly singing “this could be the year for the real thang.” (And I’m hoping Casey can post a link to the YouTube video of them. It’s only been viewed 1,372,476 times!)
Kenny Rogers actually has a small bluegrass connection in my life. When I was first getting into the music, I went to see the Osborne Brothers perform at the University of Georgia where I was a pre-med student. I had no idea who the Osborne Brothers were and no clue as to the identity of the little guy on the banjo who showed up to harass Sonny and pick a tune with him. (It was Little Roy Lewis!) I only went because my friend and banjo player Buddy Blackmon suggested it. Buddy showed me a few things on the old five and sold me my first good instrument, a gold-plated Vega VIP. I had to sell my motorcycle to buy it! I later swapped the Vega to a banjo student who was helping us put a new room on our house in Hawthorne, Florida.
And my point? Okay, okay I’m getting there! The Kenny Rogers connection is this: At the end of the show, everyone started yelling for “Ruby”! Not wanting to feel left out, I started yelling for “Ruby” also. Only I was yelling for “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” which Kenny Rogers had done, not “Ruby, Honey Are You Mad At Your Man” which was one of the Osborne Brothers’ big hits. What a surprise when Bobby Osborne hit that high note “Ru-beeeeeeeeeee” to start the song!
But back to Kenny Rogers….
Of course Kenny did his “Ruby” early in the show, and since the crowd was primarily made up of Baby Boomers, many of us sang along on the hook line, which follows the pause after the word “Ruby”: Don’t take your love to town.
And then Kenny looks out at us and says, “That is pitiful.” He said, “I did that song last week in Quebec and they sang it better up there. And they don’t even speak English.” Of course, the crowd just ate that up and we tried to sing better than those folks in Canada on the next verses!
It was that way during the whole show. Kenny talked directly to the audience and kidded us and made us feel included. He even found one specific man to pick on. This guy, Jim, said he was a big fan of Kenny’s. Kenny said, “I don’t believe you.” Then Kenny pulls out this wad of money and says, “I’ll give you ten dollars for every number one hit of mine you can name.” “The Gambler,” says Jim. And Kenny throws him the money. “What else?” says Kenny. Silenceo! Not a peep from Jim. “See?” says Kenny. “It gets harder after The Gambler.” Then he says, “But just to show you that there are no hard feelings, during the show, if I sing a song that was a number one hit, you just raise your hand, and I’ll give you ten dollars.” And Kenny did that, all night long! Jim walked away with something like $110!
What impressed me most about Kenny’s show was his emcee work and the way he interacted with the audience. He has found a way to keep the performance lively and interesting, not only to the audience, but to him. I mean, he’s been singing some of these songs for forty years! And, yes, I know most of the “off-the-cuff” banter is actually planned, but at least there is a different audience every night, so that keeps it fresh. And Kenny, the consummate professional, did a great job of acting like he was personally engaged in the presentation.
He was also up front about the expected encore. He says, “You all know what is supposed to happen. I do my ‘last’ song, I leave the stage, I go stand behind a truck (there’s always a truck), you clap, and I come back out.” But he says, “The older I get, the harder those steps are to go down and get back up.” LARGE APPLAUSE from the audience. “So,” he says, “let’s just skip all that. I’m going to do my last song and that will be it.”
And he did “Islands in the Stream” and I was happy, happy, and we all applauded loud and long but not too long because we knew he wasn’t coming back which was fine with me because I was hungry, so Patty and I went to get a Shaffer’s Barbecue sandwich, which is a must at the Shenandoah County Fair. I am sorry to say I did not see the White Rat Game, which I wrote about in Banjo Newsletter many long years ago. (Page 53 of my book…) But I suspect PETA might have gotten involved! So, Patty and I had a wonderful time and if you made it all the way through this blog, I thank you!
