Free Luck or Something Like It by Kenny Rogers

to join his group as a bass player. There was one big problem.
    “I appreciate the offer, Bobby, but I’m not a bass player. I play guitar, and I’m not even that great at guitar!”
    Bobby’s reply: “There’s more demand for bad bass players than bad guitar players.”
    I figured Bobby wasn’t hiring me for my musicianship, and though I knew little about playing jazz, I jumped at the chance to work with someone so well respected. He heard something in my work that made him believe I could learn to play stand-up bass well enough to pass muster even with the professional jazz musicians who followed his work. Plus, he wanted more from me than simply the bass playing. He liked my ability to harmonize, and that three-part harmony was important to the sound he wanted for his group, the Bobby Doyle Three. This period marked a major shift in how I approached music in general.
    It’s true that I started playing in bands for two reasons: a love of music and a desire to attract girls. It was my ticket to ride in high school. But when I started playing with Bobby Doyle, and his very savvy crowd of jazz fans began to give us feedback, my ambition changed. Now, instead of impressing the ladies, I wanted to impress my peers. It became important to me that other jazz musicians see me as a professional and not merely some kid along for the ride and the harmony singing.
    I learned how to be a musician from Bobby Doyle. Many years later, David Letterman asked me to name the best musician I had ever worked with, and without hesitation I said, “Bobby Doyle.” Bobby had been blind from birth, and his entire world was music. In fact, we used to laugh and tell him after hours of rehearsal, “Bobby, some of us have to take care of things at home once in a while.” The “some of us” were drummer Don Russell and me. We’d keep at it: “Bobby! Some of us have to mow the lawn!”
    He’d laugh, too, then continued to push us relentlessly to practice. The fact that we were ever taken seriously as a jazz trio was because of Bobby’s drive for perfection. I could never remember where B-flat on the bass was in the early days. We’d be playing along and he’d turn to me and say, “B-flat, goddammit!”
    I’d go “Okay, okay,” and play the B-flat. It took rehearsal after rehearsal, but I finally got it.
    We played our first show at the Saxony Club in Houston shortly after we formed, and the response was great. After word got around, we got bookings throughout the entire region. I needed the money to pay child support for my daughter, Carole, and for another reason: I’d gotten married again.
    I married my second wife, a beauty named Jean Massey, less than a year after breaking up with Janice. The marriage to Jean lasted a little longer—about two years, this go-round—and probably ended for a lot of reasons, but the main one again was my obsession with music. At that stage, I was working six hours a night and rehearsing four hours a day and in between, looking for any work to survive. That is not a recipe for a healthy marriage.
    That I loved being married should be obvious by now, given how many times I’ve tried it. I like almost everything about marriage. What it all boils down to, I guess, is I’m a nesting kind of person. The only one of my seven siblings who has anything vaguely negative to say about marriage is my sister Sandy, who has turned out to be the great caregiver in the family. She never married and laughs when she says, “There’s no need for everyone in this family to be miserable!”
    The Bobby Doyle Three got booked at a Houston after-hours place named the Showbiz, owned by the Fenburg brothers, Paul and Freddie. The club held only about fifty or so people, but it was a hot spot because it was right across from the Shamrock Hotel and drew a great clientele because of the location. A lot of name acts played the Shamrock, and when their shows were over, they came across to the Showbiz to unwind. The Bobby