A rediscovered Kenny Rogers duet with Dolly Parton is a love song just as sincere as the one that made their partnership famous. It’s as warm as the song that closed their professional relationship 30 years later.
“Tell Me That You Love Me” was recorded and released for a compilation album about 15 years ago, but that album was out of print and the mix “lost.” This new mix finds Parton and Rogers together again, with him leading and her adding sweet high harmonies.
Listen to “Tell Me That You Love Me” here. The song from Rogers’ just-released, posthumous Life Is Like a Song album is now available digitally for the first time.
Rogers died at age 81 in March 2020. He’d retired from music at that point, with his last non-holiday studio album being You Can’t Make Old Friends (2013). The title track from that project featured Parton and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance category in 2014.
Highlights from this new album include a Jamie O’Neal collaboration called “Straight Into Love,” the unreleased “Catchin’ Grasshoppers” — described as an ode to his twin sons Justin and Jordan — and Rogers’ cover of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight. “
Wife Wanda Rogers curated and served as executive producer for this album. She says the album is what she would have wanted.
“When listening to these recordings, it’s a beautiful reminder that everyone has experienced what these songs describe,” she says. “Kenny had a gift of expressing so many people’s feelings through his music and his voice. He reached millions, but because he was so humble, he didn’t realize the impact he truly had.”
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Kenny Rogers developed a taste for fine living early in his success. His ultra-lavish mansion in Bel Air, Calif., an estate called Lionsgate, was popular even by celebrity standards. The 11-bedroom, 17-bathroom home totals 23,988 square feet of space, and it sits on 1.63 acres of some of the most expensive real estate in California.
The lavish interior includes a master suite that encompasses more than 3,000 square feet, three separate living rooms, seven fireplaces, a billiards room, a formal study, a private 12-seat theater with leather seats, a climate-controlled wine room that opens onto a saltwater pool, three steam showers and a large dry sauna. The property also features an outdoor glass elevator that leads to a large ballroom party space with an attached guest suite and a professional-sized gym.
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Kenny Rogers may have been country music’s all-time real estate king, and one of his spectacular properties is currently for sale. Rogers’ former 6-bedroom, 9.5-bathroom, 15,409-square-foot estate in one of the priciest areas of Atlanta is currently on the market for $4.2 million, and it’s a staggering property fit for country music royalty.