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Artist
Kenny Roberts
12+ albums
countryUSA11Allspotify
about
Kenny Roberts (Oct. 14, 1927 - April 29 2012) was a country music singer, born in Lenoir City, Tennessee, but raised on a farm outside of Greenfield, Massachusetts. He started in music at the age of 11, when he organized a band comprised entirely of young harmonica players. Later, he learned to play guitar and then bass fiddle and violin. He was inspired by Yodeling Slim Clark, Jimmie Rodgers and other singing cowboys and was known as a blue yodeler. Roberts learned to yodel and at the age of 17, won a New Hampshire radio contest to be chosen as "Eastern States Yodeling Champion" in 1944. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in early 1945, and moved to Fort Wayne, Ind., after World War II ended. He performed on several shows on radio station KMOX in St. Louis, Mo., as well as the CBS Saturday morning show "Barnyard Frolics." then organized and led a Pennsylvania-based western swing band called the Down Homers, recording for Vogue Records. Rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley joined the band in 1946 as a guitarist and yodeler. In the early 2000s, a set of 1946 radio recordings by the Down Homers were discovered and Haley is named and performs the solo number "She Taught Me to Yodel." Roberts signed a recording contract with Coral Records in 1949, a division of Decca. His first release "I Never See Maggie Alone" was an immediate hit. He followed with other hits including "River of Tears," "I've Got the Blues," "Yodel Polka," "She Taught Me to Yodel," and "Hillbilly Style." He soon beg
