San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
MickeyGilley still an urban cowboy after all these years
Mickey Gilley begins rattling off a list as though he were talking about career highlights rather than his health.
“I’ve had heart surgery, brain surgery, broken my back, been in two airplane crashes and rolled a car two times,” he says. “I lost the use of my hands when I fell, and like to have broke my neck, so I can’t play piano anymore.”
Last month, Gilley also added a positive coronavirus test to his scroll of woes.
“But,” he continues, “I’m lucky. I’m 84 and still here.”
This year was to have been a big one for Gilley and Johnny Lee, as “Urban Cowboy,” the Hollywood version of a popular music scene at Gilley’s namesake club in Pasadena, turns 40. But most anniversary gigs got dropped.
“The pandemic thing got us screwed up like crazy,” Gilley says. “But we’re coping with it.”
Typically Gilley does about 115 to 130 shows a year, testament to a career that was slow to find traction. He first recorded in the late-1950s but didn’t find quick success like his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis. Gilley’s path was slower and included some other pursuits like starting the Pasadena club, Gilley’s, that would become an iconic epicenter for live music.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana (where he got his musical education in church), Gilley ended up in Texas for work, but work unrelated to music. He was married at 17, and his father-in-law did sewer and storm drain work in Houston, which offered the Gilley modest but steady income.
“It was a dollar-twenty-five an hour,” he says. “When Jerry Lee hit with ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,’ I thought, ‘I can do this, too,’ and threw my hat into that ring. I didn’t know it would take 17 years or I’d have had second thoughts.”
Gilley opened for Conway Twitty in the early ’70s, and Twitty was sufficiently impressed to offer to get Gilley a booking agent. His expectations remained low when he recorded “Room Full of Roses” in 1974 with no expectations for the song. It became a hit and his career got traction as Gilley’s, which he says opened as a 750 capacity club in 1971, was growing. “It felt like every night it got bigger,” he says.
“And it makes sense to me. I think all of us have a little cowboy in us anyway.”
“Urban Cowboy” was a hit and its beloved soundtrack made Gilley a superstar. His career to date includes 17 No. 1 country singles and 39 Top 10 country singles. Gilley’s closed in 1989, but affection for the film and the scene remained. As the anniversary of the film approached, he and Lee found audiences eager to hear the music from the film, so they put together a show where each would play a set and also collaborate on a few “Urban Cowboy” songs together.
More than the lost dates, Gilley misses the opportunity at the few shows he’s done this year to meet with fans afterward.
“Talking to the people, that’s the thing that has kept me going,” he says. “Because I won’t be around forever. So I miss that. I’ll tell you a story, a gal came to see me, and she had a George Strait T-shirt on. And I said to her, ‘Let’s see George Strait do this at 84 years old.’ I was just jacking with her. But I enjoy that part of it, being with the people. And that came to a screeching halt.”