"All the songs I record fall into one of two categories, as a rule," Kenny Rogers once said. "One is ballads that say what every man would like to say, and every woman would like to hear. The other is story songs that have social significance." The 1978 country-pop crossover classic "The Gambler" fits squarely into the second category: songwriter Don Schlitz's painterly evocation of strangers on a train to nowhere brilliantly combines the trappings of old-west melodrama with the stark wisdom of a zen koan, spinning a larger-than-life tale that remains the pinnacle of Rogers' career.Read more...
