During this 2015 program, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Kim Carnes performs some of her best-known songs—including the biggest hit of 1981, “Bette Davis Eyes”—and details her journey from a Pasadena, California, childhood to a place as a much-lauded Nashville songwriter.

Carnes wrote her first song at age four, the same age she “married” neighbor and future guitar hero David Lindley. Through the years that followed, her songs have been recorded by Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand, Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, Ronny Milsap, Big Mama Thornton, and many others.

Sound clips and rare photographs enrich the program, presented in connection with the exhibition “Kenny Rogers: Through the Years.” Rogers was a longtime Carnes comrade. They recorded a hit duet with “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer,” and Carnes and husband Dave Ellingson penned the entirety of Rogers’s “Gideon” album. Rogers and Carnes were both part of the multi-artist hit 1985 hit “We Are the World,” one of the top-selling singles in music history.

Rogers is but one of the major personalities that Carnes talks about in this program, as she has collaborated with a myriad artists (she’s only one degree removed from actor Kevin Bacon, her co-written “I’ll Be Where the Heart Is” appearing on the multi-million-selling soundtrack for the Bacon-starring “Flashdance”).

Carnes punctuates the chat by singing “If I Was an Angel” and “Bette Davis Eyes” with accompaniment by her longtime guitarist, Billy Panda, and by playing piano and singing “Still Warmed by the Thrill.”

Presented in connection with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibition "Kenny Rogers: Through the Years" (August 15, 2014, through June 14, 2015).

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