Luck or Something Like It by Kenny Rogers

be featured on our own. Then Kirby, the main attraction, would come out and we’d be part of the backup band. We played a lot and learned a lot about harmony, arrangement, and stage performance. I carried all of these things with me as I later moved from genre to genre.
    Kirby took us to New York to record the inaugural Bobby Doyle Three album, and we stayed at his house in Paterson, New Jersey, throughout the process. It was a jazz album with standards including “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “I Got Rhythm.” As it turned out, we played on very little of the record. Most of the music was played by a big band Kirby brought in. We were certainly not studio musicians, and at the time Kirby recorded the Bobby Doyle Three, that’s how things were done. It’s been reported that I felt the album didn’t work because bringing in outside musicians was a mistake. I don’t know if I ever said anything like that, but it is doubtful.
    The album, In a Most Unusual Way, was released on Columbia Records in March 1962. It produced nothing that made any waves, so we then signed a deal with the Houston label Townhouse and sent a song called “Don’t Feel Rained On” to radio. Once again, the release didn’t go anywhere. Kirby had good bookings, and we came with the package, so we kept working whether we had a hit record or not. I was a gainfully employed, twenty-three-year-old jazz bassist and loving it.
    After the album came out, we were performing in Winnipeg, Canada, with Kirby. It was minus fifty degrees and I told Don and Bobby I would go to the club on Saturday morning and pick up our check. I walked out of the hotel, went about thirty yards, then turned around and came back. Now remember, I’m from Texas. I had on a sweater and a pair of jeans. When I returned, the doorman said that if had I gone all the way to the club and back, I probably would have had frostbite on my ears and nose. I had no concept about that kind of cold, but I did after that.
    Aside from working with Kirby, we had managed to book a few jobs without him. One of them was at a little piano bar/jazz club on Sunset Boulevard called the Melody Room, better known today as the Viper Room, the same club where River Phoenix died. After a few nights there, we realized there was a regular customer at the bar every night. The customer was Clint Eastwood.

Chapter Seven
    It’s Not All Wet Towels and Naked Women
    I divorced Jean in 1963, and not too long after, I met my next wife-to-be, Margo Anderson, at Houston’s Bunny Club, the local equivalent of a Playboy Club, where she stood out as far and above the most interesting woman—quite an accomplishment for that place. She was different from anyone I had ever met. Not only was she beautiful, she was smart. I mean Mensa smart.
    She had been married to an undercover narcotics officer from Corpus Christi before we met, so she was very street smart as well. By this point, Jean Massey and I were struggling to see what it was we had seen in each other in the first place. To say the least, I was susceptible, so I let Margo take full advantage of me. I really loved Margo’s parents. Her father was like an old salt—Scandinavian, I think—a big guy with a heart of gold. Her mom, Doris, gave you the feeling that she knew the whole story about life in general. They were always exceptionally nice and treated me with great respect.
    Margo and I had an explosive relationship right from the start. When it was good, it could not have been better, but when it was bad—stand back. Margo didn’t really like to argue, she liked to fight, and she knew how push my buttons. She loved to regurgitate problems, things that happened from years before. Once I heard “do you remember,” I knew what was coming next and I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. There is no question I must have overreacted at that point. She had strong opinions about things I didn’t even recall, and she could remember the