COUNTRY MUSIC STAR WHOSE CLUB INSPIRED HIT FILM ‘URBAN COWBOY’
Mickey Gilley, the hit singer and piano player whose Texas nightclub was the inspiration for the movie “Urban Cowboy” and the glittering country music revival that accompanied it, died Saturday at a hospital in Branson, Mo. He was 86.
His publicist, Zach Farnum, announced the death but did not cite a cause.
A honey-toned singer with a warm, unhurried delivery, Gilley had 17 No. 1 country singles from 1974 to 1983, including “I Overlooked an Orchid” and “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time.”
He placed 34 records in the country Top 10 during his two decades on the charts. But he was ultimately best known as the proprietor, with Sherwood Cryer, of Gilley’s, the honky-tonk in Pasadena, Texas, that became one of the most storied nightspots in country music.
Established in 1971 as a local bar catering to 9to-5ers in and around Pasadena, an oil refinery town near Houston, Gilley’s was large, encompassing 48,000 square feet, with a parquet dance floor that could accommodate up to 5,000 people. Among the hall’s main attractions was its mechanical bull, a repurposed piece of rodeo-training equipment on which the club’s more intrepid patrons vied to see who could ride the longest before being thrown off.
Just as striking was the line dancing of its bootscooting regulars in crisply pressed Wranglers, gleaming belt buckles and immaculately cared-for Stetson hats.
Extending rodeo iconography beyond the provinces of the American West, Gilley’s shaped dance
scenes in cities and suburbs across the nation, especially after an article by Aaron Latham about the club, “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America’s Search for True Grit,” appeared in Esquire magazine in 1978.
Two years later, Paramount Pictures released the film “Urban Cowboy,” starring John Travolta and Debra Winger and directed by James Bridges. Much of the film was shot at Gilley’s.
Well into his 30s before he had his first hit, and over 40 when his nightclub achieved widespread acclaim, Gilley was something of a late bloomer compared with his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, whose success had reached its zenith — and flamed out, after his marriage to his adolescent cousin — by the time he turned 22.
Another of Gilley’s pianoplaying cousins, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, achieved fame (and notoriety, for scandals involving prostitutes) more readily than Gilley did as well.
Mickey Leroy Gilley was born March 9, 1936, in Natchez, Miss., to Irene (Lewis) and Arthur Gilley. Raised in nearby Ferriday, La., he grew up singing gospel harmonies
with his cousins Swaggart and Lewis, and sneaking into juke joints with them to hear blues and honky-tonk music.
Gilley’s mother bought him a piano when he was 10, shortly before he came under the boogie-woogie-inspired tutelage of his cousin Lewis.
Settling in Pasadena in the early ’60s, Gilley began performing regularly at the Nesadel Club, a honky-tonk owned by his future business partner, Cryer. His recording career did not gain traction until 1974, when Hugh Hefner’s Playboy label rereleased his version of “Room Full of Roses,” which had been a No. 2 pop hit in 1949 for Sammy Kaye and his orchestra. Gilley’s iteration became a No. 1 country single.
Gilley is survived by his wife, Cindy Loeb Gilley; a daughter, Kathy Gilley; three sons, Michael, Gregory and Keith Ray Gilley; four grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. He was married to Vivian McDonald from 1962 until her death in 2019. His first marriage, to Geraldine Garrett, ended in divorce.