Before his death in 2020 at 81, Kenny Rogers had turned himself into a cornerstone of American entertainment. Yes, he was a country music giant—“The Gambler”, “Lady”, “Coward of the County”, “Through the Years" and his 1983 duet with Dolly Parton, “Islands in the Stream”, were crossover hits as big as the genre ever produced, and made him one of its earliest mainstream superstars. But he transcended any one category or style or type of entertainment. He was an actor and go-to cultural signpost, immortalised beyond his chart success in a Seinfeld episode centred around his roasted chicken franchise and The Big Lebowski’s sequence set to “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)”, until then a fringe classic from his 1967 band The First Edition.