Kenny Rogers – “Coward Of The County”

TOP 40 DEBUT: December 1, 1979

PEAK POSITION: #3 (January 26, 1980)

Kenny Rogers was almost forty before he made his first solo album. Nearly two decades after he’d initially set foot in a recording studio, Rogers signed a deal with United Artists, and Love Lifted Me was released in the summer of 1976. Only one single from the record charted on the Hot 100. It peaked at #97, another setback in a career already littered with them. And it would be Rogers’ last one for a very long time.

Less than four years later, when “Coward Of The County” hit #1 in the U.K., Canada, and Ireland (along with #3 in America), Kenny Rogers had become one of the most successful crossover country acts in Hot 100 history. Between 1977 and 1979, he put six singles in the Top 40, each one hitting #1 Country for good measure. And he was just getting started. Beginning with “Coward Of The County,” Rogers would hit the Top 40 thirteen more times over the next five years. In a time of unprecedented harmony between the country and pop charts, Kenny Rogers wasn’t just a popular “crossover” artist. For the first half of the ‘80s, he was one of Billboard’s most popular artists, period.

As a teenager, the soon-to-be-conquering country star dabbled in teen pop under the name Kenneth Rogers, scoring a regional hit in 1957 with “That Crazy Feeling.” His twenties included stints playing jazz (the Bobby Doyle Three) and folk (the New Christy Minstrels) before landing on psychedelic rock with The First Edition. Within two years, Rogers had above-the-title billing; as frontman for the rechristened “Kenny Rogers and The First Edition,” he spent the bulk of his thirties growing his hair long and dying the grey out of his beard. The group had a couple early successes—“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” and “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” both 9s—followed by a long commercial fallow. By 1974, Rogers was broke. To pull himself out of debt, he tried hawking a “Quick-Pickin’ N’ Fun-Strummin’” home guitar course on national television. His bandmates were not amused. The Final Edition ceased functioning by 1975; a final tour, in 1976, served primarily to give Kenny a cash influx while he put together his own backup band.

Rogers released a second solo album in 1977, and once again the first single tanked. “Lucille,” the second one, absolutely did not. Released without much fanfare, the song immediately topped both the country charts in America and the U.K. singles chart abroad, as well as peaking at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. (“Lucille” is a 6, unless you’re in a bar where they’re singing the extra words. Then it’s a 10.) Rogers never look back. He already had two additional country #1’s under his belt before “The Gambler” dropped in 1978 and made him a straight-up superstar.

It might surprise you to learn that “The Gambler,” despite its now-permanent residence in the pop culture canon (and, as of 2018, the Library of Congress), was not one of Rogers’ bigger pop hits. On the Hot 100, it topped out at a respectable #16, which puts it squarely in the middle of Kenny’s ‘70s chart run. His next two singles did much better. And “Coward Of The County” did a lot better. Which is equally surprising, because every single second of “Coward Of The County” feels like a blatant attempt to reverse-engineer a “Gambler” sequel. And like most sequels, it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.

“The Gambler” is a rare beast: a classic story song and a massive earworm, a piece of cornball mythmaking where the hokeyness is a feature, not a bug. (It’s also a 10, and deep down you know I’m right.) And it’s here that Rogers’ limited vocal range becomes an asset for the first time, with his delivery—craggy, but filled with character—selling the material better than any “trained” singer ever could. Seeing how entire legacies get built on exactly this kind of signature tune, I don’t begrudge Rogers for going right back to the well as soon as possible. (“Coward Of The County” would show up on his very next album.) I just wish the cut-and-paste job wasn’t quite so obvious.

The two men tasked with replicating the “Gambler” formula weren’t exactly songwriting novices. Billy “Edd” Wheeler had penned “Jackson” for Johnny and June Carter Cash; Roger Bowling was one of the men responsible for "Lucille." Their original intent was to craft an underdog story in the vein of My Fair Lady. But once Bowling landed on the phrase “coward of the county,” the pair liked the alternation so much they decided to shift the narrative to fit the title. They wrote the rest of the song over a single weekend.

Look, none of the parties involved ever admitted to intentionally copying Rogers’ earlier smash. But the circumstantial evidence piles up. “The Gambler” is a four-on-the-floor country shuffle with a tempo of 87 BPM; “Coward” is a four-on-the-floor country shuffle with a tempo of 91 BPM. “The Gambler” hits its key change at 1:36; “Coward” does the same at 1:30. Hell, even the TV movies (1980’s Kenny Rogers as The Gambler and 1981’s Kenny Rogers: Coward Of The County) were released within a year of each other. The only major difference in the two compositions? Content. “The Gambler” is your classic “wise old man imparts wisdom” setup, pretty genteel stuff aside from said old man dying on a train in the middle of the night. But “Coward Of The County”? “Coward” is a song about gang rape, and cold-blooded murder, and a triple homicide, all presented as a redemption arc. And that’s all kinds of messed up.

Here’s the plotline in a nutshell: The townspeople consider Tommy, our hero, to be “yellow.” In reality, he’s only honoring a deathbed soliloquy from his felon father to “promise me, son, not to do the things I’ve done.” Still, the whole “coward of the county” thing sticks. Tommy’s tendency to “turn the other cheek” gets tested when Becky, the love of his life, suffers a home invasion and three men (“the Gatlin boys”) proceed to “take turns” with her. Tommy comes home to discover Becky has been gang raped, and Tommy responds… badly. He tracks the Gatlin brothers to a local bar, locks the door, and unleashes “twenty years of crawling” that’s been “bottled up inside him.” Which basically results in three dead bodies and an unsubtle shift of the chorus, from “you don’t have to fight to be a man” to “sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.” (It also resulted in the Gatlin Brothers having major issues with being portrayed as gang-rapists in a giant country hit. Wheeler claimed the name choice was accidental; Larry Gatlin responded in a 2016 podcast that Bowling had nursed a personal grudge against him for years. Decide for yourself.)

In parsing out the details of Wheeler and Bowling’s morality play, I was struck by uncanny similarities to an earlier, far grittier work: Straw Dogs. Sam Peckinpah’s notorious 1971 film stars Dustin Hoffman as a meek mathematician who relocates with his wife to England (becoming, basically, the coward of Cornwall county). After his own lover is—surprise!—gang-raped, Hoffman’s character David Sumner snaps in similar fashion, but the resulting carnage isn’t presented as any kind of triumph. It’s awful, and brutal, and makes you question the whole logic of violence begetting violence.

And look, I’m not expecting a four-minute country song and a two-hour arthouse movie to have equally nuanced takes on the ramifications of revenge killing. I just wish Kenny Rogers’ narrator didn’t side so completely with the dude who just murdered three other dudes in a bar. Just like I wish more people had questioned the song’s ugly specifics before driving it up the charts, where it stayed at #3 for nearly the entirety of February 1980. But given the choice between moral complexity and commercial success, Rogers took the easy route. By the end of Straw Dogs, David Sumner is no one’s idea of a hero. By the end of “Coward Of The County,” Tommy is practically a damn legend.

GRADE: 4/10

BONUS BITS: Here’s the climactic scene from the 1981 TV movie, which basically retcons Tommy’s original homicide down to some Dukes Of Hazard-style shenanigans. Also, you get Kenny Rogers as a preacher who administers a (not-remotely-convincing) ass whipping.

BONUS BONUS BITS: Hey, you know what would make this revenge fable palatable to five-year-olds? The Chipmunks! At least they left out the gang-rape part. (Lest you think this isn't real, here's the actual album.)