ROGERS: I write from time to time but - you know, I think great writers have a need to write, and I don't really have that need.

INSKEEP: Now, you have not written most of your own songs. And that's, really, what I love to do songs that - you love them before you realize what they're about, but you get the message vicariously, once you learn to like the song. 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town' was about a guy who came home from war. ROGERS: You know, 'The Coward of the County' was about a rape. If you look at - 'Reuben James' was about a black man who raised a white child. And one is ballads that say what every man would like to say, and every woman would like to hear and the other thing - are story-songs that have social significance. ROGERS: All the songs I do record, they fall into one of two categories, as a rule. And he talked with us about trying to make a song endure. INSKEEP: At age 74, Kenny Rogers has written a memoir, called 'Luck or Something Like It.' He traces his life from his youth in public housing in Houston, in the 1940s through times as a jazz musician and folk singer, before he became a solo star.

Here's a question for Kenny Rogers: What makes a song last? His tunes are the kind you recognize even if you haven't heard them in years. KENNY ROGERS: Everyone considered him the coward of the county. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, 'COWARD OF THE COUNTY')

Kenny rogers through the years listen