There are some psychologists who claim that there are no accidents. Call it fate, predestinations, kismet, or whatever you will, the unintended blending of Dottie West and Kenny Rogers’ voices in the studio has resulted in a duet team that sounds like it was ordered in heaven. There are three versions of how it all acme about: Dottie’s, Kenny’s and Larry Butler’s. They are all pretty much the same, but each of the folks involved gets carried away with sheer excitement of it. Dottie’s version goes like this: “We can sing in the same key. There’s not one modulation in the whole album. “Dottie spoke with excitement in her voice. Duets usually require a little adjusting and arranging to make voices of different ranges fit. The sound that happened in Dottie and Kenny’s first venture together had a lot going for it. It’s a very sexy sound – two mature people who know well the ins and outs of love and life and enjoy it all. We spoke of Kenny Rogers. “He is sexy, isn’t he?” Dottie asked with a delightful grin. In case you haven’t noticed, Ms. West doesn’t take a back seat to anybody when it comes to being fox. Watch the guys in the audience respond to that down to earthiness the ‘country sunshine’ girl exudes. Both Dottie and Kenny are happily married: Dottie to picker Byron Metcalf and Kenny to ‘Hee Haws’ lovely Marianne Gordon. But West and Rogers also dig each other, and this respect and friendship come warmly across in their music. Dottie West was anxiously to tell her version of that fateful night a Jack Clements Studio that was the beginning of a brand new sound. “Kenny and I had been friends for a couple of years. We’d never really talked about it, recording together. He just

dropped by the session. I was doing some overdubs on tracks I already had. Kenny was just setting, watching. It was just the engineer, Billy Sherrill, Larry Butler, Kenny, and me. I walked into the control room, and Kenny gave me a great compliment about my singing, “Dottie explained with a pleased look lightning her pretty face, “Thank you very much, I said, I feel the same way. I buy you’re records now. I love you’re singing, you know, no matter how long you’ve been in this business, you’re never satisfied. You have to keep have to keep reaching and looking for new goals, new things to do. I said, I have a new goal. You want to know what it is? He said, “What is it”? I said, I want to sing on record with Kenny Rogers. He said, “You got it”, and we shook hands with me right then. I went back in the studio and kept waiting for them to turn on the tape for me to start working with the track.” Dottie waited some, then said, “Hey guys, I’m ready when you are.” Larry Butler answered, “Hold on, Dottie, we’re gonna set up another mike. Kenny’s gonna come in and help you sing this one.” The song was a tune Butler has selected for Dottie; called “Every Time Two Fools Collide,” witch quickly reached the coveted number 1 position on the country charts. There were only three takes and the tune was in the can. Dottie West was awed by Rogers’s ability to master a new song so quickly. In praise of Kenny, Dottie confided, “I think Kenny is a musical genius, and so is Larry. In his end of the business, choosing the material and putting the right music to it, he is, too. Kenny can sing anything in almost anybody’s key. I love his style. He’s got a lot of soul, a lot of blues. That’s

what I like.” Dottie Wets is not a new discovery by any means. She has been nominated fifteens for the prestigious Grammy award, and is justly proud of her win for “Here Comes My Baby.” After many years at RCA, Dottie chose to change to United Artists label and producer Larry Butler, whose track record of hits stretches from coast to coast and back again. Butler is the man who turned United Artists Records from a frog into a music- industry magic kingdom. It was the Butler wisdom that united Crystal Gayle and Allen Reynolds, a home-run combination in anybody’s ballpark. Add a man named Rogers and a lady named “Lucille,” and you can see the wheels start to turn. Dottie West remarked, “Larry Butler has brought me so much good luck, I call it ‘the L.B. magic.’ It seemed like it was a stale combination with me and whoever at RCA. We could not get anything going for a while. “After “Country Sunshine” fell of the charts, Dottie’s records were in the high end of the top twenty, but not high enough to satisfy a perfectionist who gives all she’s got every time. Dottie continued “I really felt I needed somebody with some zip. I needed a change. It almost felt like a divorce. This is a new start. I feel like a brand new artist. It’s really given me a new shot of energy, and I love working with Larry Butler, I love to write with him, I love to sing with him in the studio. I love the songs he chooses for me to sing, I like his kind of music.” With a grin Dottie added, “I’m very happy working with him.” We asked Larry for his comments on the situation. Butler graciously informed us: “I had been talking to Kenny about the possibility of him doing duets for quiet a while. I had also talked to Dottie about it, because she had had so much

success before with Jimmy Dean and with Don Gibson. But the whole thing was an accident. I’d kicked around the thought of both of them doing duets, but not with each other. I was working with Dottie one night in the studio. Kenny was supposed to come in at ten o’ clock. I had Dottie in at six, doing some vocal overdubs on tracks we had for her album. Kenny came in and sat down and was listening to what we were doing.” During a break Dottie and Kenny had their now famous discussion about singing together. Butler continued, “She went back out to the studio and I told Kenny she was very serious. I said, man, it would be out of sight. You’re voices together would be incredible.” He said, “Well I’m serous – I’d love to do it.” Kenny asked if Larry had a song he’d done with Dottie that the two could sing together. When Larry checked the list and saw “When Two Fools Collide,” he knew he had the perfect song. Butler concluded “We went out in the studio and set up the microphone, and he sang the hell out of it. He inspired Dottie too.” Larry added, “Dottie’s a fine lady, she’s one of the sincere people in the business.” About Rogers, Larry commented, “He’s a true professional. I met Kenny a few years ago in Houston, Texas, through a mutual friend of ours. I told him at that time I was interested in working with him. Two years later, he called me at U.A. one day

and wanted to sit down and talk about it. That’s when it all started. I went after Dottie, “Larry confided. “I wanted Dottie. I’ve admired and respected her for a long time. She was with some fine people, but I personally was not satisfied with what they were doing with her. I felt that if she was with U.A., she would get more concentration, more promotion, and a lot more effort on her behalf. As a producer I would be very critical of material for her, because I knew what her capabilities were.” We discussed the image West and Rogers seem to be generating. She’s all woman, I guarantee you. I’m very, very proud of the success. You know, when you hear a producer say, I knew it was gonna happen, you sometimes wonder. But I have witnesses that were in the control room that night. When they started singing that song, I turned around to me engineer and said, You’re listening to a number-one record. There’s still another voice to be heard from who was half that studio magic. Kenny Rogers spoke from Las Vegas, where he was performing in the main room of the famed and fabulous Riviera Hotel. Headliner Kenny shared the bill with Olivia Newton-John, and informed us that Livvy is still doing her country singles in her act, even though she’s branched out into rock and roll and the movie, co-starring

with John Travolta (eat you’re hearts out, ladies) in Grease. Kenny’s show is noteworthy for more than his typical great performance. The set at the Riviera has to look like ….you guessed it, a bar in Toledo! The musicians are scattered out around the bar. When the song begins, Kenny finds that the audience is so into singing “Lucille” with him that he finally just drops out and listens to the audience. The whole effect is a marvelous tribute to Rogers., who has earned too many to count in his incredible career. When we asked the inventible question, Kenny replied, “Recording with Dottie was pure pleasure for me. She has a way with a song that makes her a dream to work with both on record and in live performance. Dottie and Byron (her husband) are very special people. Duet teams have been with us for a long time, with truly fine acts like Conway and Loretta, Bill and Mary Lou, Jim Ed and Helen, and the Kendalls, to name a few. There’s something a little bit different about Dottie West and Kenny Rogers, though,that coasts a smooth, sexy-earthy spell. They are so relaxed, so confident and comfortable. You get the impression that these two veteran professionals will seem as new as they do today.