Back in 1980, as People explains, Kenny Rogers was an established country artist on the lookout for a songwriter to provide him with his next big song (Rogers rarely wrote his own songs, as NPR News noted). Meanwhile, Lionel Richie was slugging it out with his funk band The Commodores, writing easy-listening love ballads that his bandmates often rejected. One such ballad was “Lady,” which didn’t work as a funk tune — and it would be four years before Richie left his band to strike out as a solo artist. Enter Kenny Rogers.
“Lady,” of course, became a smash hit, and solidified Rogers as a country superstar — possibly the biggest of his generation, along with Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The song also became the basis of a decades-long friendship with Richie. Indeed, Richie would say that “Lady” marked the beginning of his solo career. “Everything that happened in my life, truthfully, from that moment on, had a Kenny Rogers stamp on it. I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor,” Richie said. Their friendship endured despite their 10-year age difference, and despite one man being Black and from a middle-class Alabama family, the other white and born dirt poor in Texas. “Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, whatever you want to call it. That was us,” Richie said (via People), while also crediting Rogers with helping him navigate his transition from The Commodores to his own solo career.
