Kenny Rogers' Impressive Net Worth Was Left To His Family

Nov 04, 2020 by apost team

Kenny Rogers remains one of the most influential country music singers, and his influence on the genre will live forever. After his tragic death early this year, it became clear to everyone that Rogers' music and personality influenced people globally.

After he passed, he left his wife and five kids with a considerable amount of wealth that he'd earned throughout his long and successful music career. But in contrast, his early life had much more simple roots.

Many fans flooded social media with sad tributes in the hours following Roger's death, making his unerasable mark on country music and the American music industry all the more evident. 

Throughout his long career, Rogers ensured that he worked hard to earn every penny he received. According to Celebrity Net Worth, the musician accumulated quite a figure—$250 million, to be exact. After passing on, his wife Wanda Miller received a fraction of the wealth while the rest was divided between their five children. Despite his immense wealth, his early life had much humbler roots.

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Rogers, whose real name was Kenneth Ray Rogers, was born in Houston, Texas, on August 21, 1938.

His family was impoverished, and his parents struggled with providing him and his sibling a decent life. They lived in a housing project that was funded by the federal government. He grew up with his six siblings and parents in the housing project situated on the opposite side of the rail tracks. 

Speaking about his poor background, Rogers said, "We were on welfare most of my childhood."

 His dad earned a living by working as a carpenter and struggled with alcoholism. Speaking to Reuters, Roger revealed that watching his father struggle with his addiction made him decide to renounce alcohol altogether. 

"I never drank in my life. I saw it destroy him and saw it destroy other people I work with, so I made a conscious decision about this," he said. "Plus, I didn't know if there was any predetermination for me as the son of an alcoholic to become addicted, so I just never tried it."

In his biography titled Luck or Something Like It, the musician explains bit by bit how his challenging upbringing has shaped his life.

Before he became a famous musician, he worked as a busboy at the Rice Hotel in Houston. He also had a gig working as a cleaner in a hat shop. But from a young age, Rogers always knew he ultimately wanted to pursue music. 

"My mom told me when I was very young, 'Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life,' and that just sounded too good to be true," Rogers told Fox News in a 2012 interview. "So I set out on this musical journey. I've been lucky in my life. That's what I wanted to tell people to pursue their dreams."

Among his siblings, Rogers was the first one to graduate from high school. He started his first music band towards the end of the 1950s, where he had a group known as 'The Scholars.'

Although he wasn't the lead singer in the band, he did have a spotlight number known as Moonlight in Vermont. The band released a few local hits and made a name for themselves in Houston. At the time, Rogers had started to enjoy stardom and the fruits of his music. As a result, he had become quite popular among local girls.

In 2014, Rogers' brother, Lelan, remembered one of his early music career highlights by reflecting on an incident during a local concert. 

He recalled that during that particular concert, many girls were in attendance and kept screaming. His wife leaned unto him and told him, "There is your star." He responded by saying, "That's no star, it's just my kid brother."

In 1958, Rogers experienced some success in his music career after recording his single hit song That Crazy Feeling. That same year, he was featured in American Bandstand, which was a popular music program at the time. At the onset of his career, Kenny explored different styles of music genres. He once played bass within a jazz group and experimented with folk-style pop by joining New Christy Minstrels in 1996.

Kenny experienced mainstream success during the mid-1970s when he embarked on a solo career to become a household name. In 1977, he released the ballad Lucille, which was his first country music hit. The song would later earn him his first Grammy Award. In 1978, Kenny released his hit song The Gambler, which also won him another Grammy.

Kenny's career will continue to live on, and thankfully we can all appreciate what he gave to the world through his music forever.

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