Biography
Born in Winter Park, Florida, Rogers was the namesake of two prominent architects. As a young man, he chose the path of a musician. While on his way to interview for a job at an architecture firm, he attended a Serendipity Singers audition in New York. Rogers borrowed a guitar, tried out, and was admitted to the group.
Gamble Rogers began performing around Florida in the 1960s, often performing with other noted Florida singer-songwriters Paul Champion, Jim Bellew, and Will McLean. By the 1970s, he was a regular fixture at the Florida Folk Festival, often as the headliner. He appeared in James Szalapski's 1976 country music documentary film Heartworn Highways, performing an onstage comic monologue followed by "Black Label Blues." By the 1980s, he was often featured on public television and public radio. As a self-described "modern troubadour," Rogers influenced musicians such as Jimmy Buffett and David Bromberg, with the former dedicating his album Fruitcakes to him. In their tribute to him, "Song for Gamble," Steve Gillette and his wife Cindy Mangsen describe him: "He had the gift of innocence, and a fondness for the key of 'E'."
While Rogers was camping at Flagler Beach, a frightened young girl ran to him, begging him to help her father, who was in trouble in rough surf. Compromised by spinal arthritis that had been worsening since childhood, Rogers nevertheless grabbed an air mattress and headed into the ocean in a rescue attempt. Both men died in the surf. In honor of his heroism, the Florida Legislature renamed the state park Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach.
Read more about this topic: Gamble Rogers
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)