That Time Kenny Rogers Did ‘The Gambler’ Sketch on ‘The Muppet Show’
Country music legend and actor Kenny Rogers would’ve been 86 years old today.
Rogers, famous for “The Gambler,” “Lady,” “Lucille,” “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” and many more, was born August 21, 1938, in Houston, Texas.
To honor the occasion, I fondly recall one of my first TV memories (and still my favorite of Rogers’ film and TV appearances): He was the guest on an October 1979 episode of The Muppet Show.
Rogers was in a surrealistic sketch in which he sang “The Gambler” with three Muppets, telling the song’s story about a young man meeting an old card player on a train (bound for nowhere!) and getting some good life advice in exchange for whiskey and a cigarette. Have a watch:
I remember the ghostly apparition of the Gambler after he “broke even” and died in his sleep, singing the echoed “when to hold ’em” lyric and dancing merrily. I didn’t quite remember that the Muppets in the sketch were bizarrely half-human, with Muppet heads and human hands, arms and (I think) legs. Odd that they didn’t go full-on Muppet there, but I suppose the train car set may have limited what the puppeteers could do.
It’s also kind of strange how expressionless Rogers appears during most of the sketch. Though it’s not like he’s a barrel of monkeys in the song’s official music video, either:
Sadly, Rogers passed away March 20, 2020, at age 81, after creating decades of incredible music, starring in respectable movies, founding a chicken restaurant franchise and undergoing much cosmetic surgery.
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