With four hungry children and a crop in the field
Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.
03/07/77 : Kenny Rogers - Kenny Rogers
Country's not been overly well represented here over the years and this is our first visit with one of the senior statesmen - you wouldn't believe how many of his albums are on Amazon, but this one isn't. I'm expecting a load of cheese, but at least it's got "Lucille" on it so it's not all going to be dreadful.
Yeah, it's pretty cheesy but he's certainly got a lovely voice - you can't help but feel that if they stripped back some of the backing singers and instrumentation then a lot of the songs would be a lot more effective. "Lucille" is a fine track, but unfortunately his version of "Green Green Grass Of Home" isn't a patch on Tom's.
We're at #16 on the charts this week on his fourth week of a seven week run having peaked at #14 in his third week - not exactly chart domination from the lad. The top five this week were the A Star Is Born soundtrack (it spent two weeks at the top in a 47 week run - there's an argument it meets the cultural significance level to be listened to, but it's far too late to go back now!), The Muppets, Johnny Mathis, The Beatles and ABBA. All in all, a strange mix and the highest new entry was Neil Young (#17 - so thank you to Kenny for saving me from Neil).
Wikipedia tells us this is his second album and was his commercial breakthrough, getting to #1 in the US Country chart - the first of twelve of his albums to do so. And the reason for the breakthrough was "Lucille" which only got to #5 in the US, but hit the top spot over here. Surprisingly the album also did better over here with it only getting to #30 in the US.
"Customers also listened to" - well, we don't know because it's not on Amazon but I think we can guess the sort of people that would pop up. And Kenny's one of my favourites of that type, but there's not too many things on here I'd add to my Kenny playlist - except for "Lucille", of course!
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