Kenny Rogers was broke, three times divorced and picking out a living as a bass player with a country-rock outfit called “The First Edition” when a sentimental ballad about a lovesick husband rolled onto his lap.

In “Lucille,” Rogers found a comfortable middle ground in the vast stretches between country and pop music, fertile turf that would yield a remarkable string of aching love songs and narrative ballads about gamblers, drifters and lost souls searching for love.