Country music star Mickey Gilley, whose Texas honky-tonk namesake inspired the 1980 film Urban Cowboy and a national wave of western-themed nightspots, has died at the age of 86.
Gilley died Saturday in Branson, Missouri, where he helped manage the Mickey Gilley Grand Shanghai Theater. He had been acting as recently as last month, but his health deteriorated over the past week.
“He passed away peacefully with his family and close friends by his side,” said a statement from Mickey Gilley Associates.
A cousin of rock’n’roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, Gilley opened Gilley’s, “the world’s largest honky tonk,” in Pasadena, Texas, in the early 1970s. By the mid-1970s, he owned a successful club and had enjoyed his first commercial success with Room Full of Roses. He began producing country hits on a regular basis, including Window Up Above, Ella She Ella’s Pulling Me Back Again, and the honky-tonk anthem Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time.
Overall, he had 39 top 10 country hits and 17 No. 1 songs. He received six Academy of Country Music Awards and also worked on occasion as an actor, with appearances on Murder She Wrote, The Fall Guy, Fantasy Island and The Dukes of Hazzard.
“If I had one wish in life, I would wish for more time,” Gilley told the Associated Press in March 2001 as he celebrated his 65th birthday. Not that he would do anything differently, the singer said.
“I am doing exactly what I want to do. I play golf, I fly my plane, and I perform in my theater in Branson, Missouri,” she said. “I love doing my show for people.”
Meanwhile, the gigantic nightspot’s attractions, including its famous mechanical bull, led to the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Debra Winger and considered by many to be a country version of Travolta’s 1977 disco hit, Cowboy Fever. Saturday night. Gilley’s club-inspired film was based on an Esquire article by Aaron Latham about the relationship between two club regulars.
“I thank John Travolta every night before I go to bed for keeping my career alive,” Gilley said in 2002. “It is impossible to express how grateful I am for my part in Urban Cowboy. That movie had a huge impact on my career, and it still does.”
The soundtrack featured such hits as Johnny Lee’s Lookin’ for Love, Boz Scaggs’ Look What You’ve Done for Me and Gilley’s Stand by Me. The movie turned the Pasadena club into an overnight tourist draw and popularized pearl-studded shirts, long-necked beers, the steel guitar, and mechanical bulls across the country.
But the club closed in 1989 after Gilley and his business partner Sherwood Cryer fell out over how to run the venue. A fire destroyed it shortly after.
In 2003, an upscale version of the old Gilley nightclub opened in Dallas. In recent years, Gilley has moved to Branson.
He was married three times, most recently to Cindy Loeb Gilley. He had four children, three with his first wife, Geraldine Garrett, and one with his second, Vivian McDonald.
Born in Natchez, Mississippi, Gilley grew up poor and learned to play boogie-woogie piano in Ferriday, Louisiana, along with Lewis and his cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the future evangelist. Like Lewis, he would sneak in the windows of Louisiana clubs to listen to rhythm and blues. He moved to Houston to work construction, but played the local club scene at night and recorded and toured for years before catching up in the 1970s.
Gilley had suffered from health problems in recent years. She underwent brain surgery in August 2008 after specialists diagnosed her with hydrocephalus, a condition characterized by increased fluid in the skull. Gilley had been suffering from short-term memory loss and credited the surgery with stopping the onset of dementia.
He underwent further surgeries in 2009 after he fell from a step, forcing him to cancel scheduled performances in Branson. In 2018, he suffered a broken ankle and broken right shoulder in a car accident.
Reference-www.theguardian.com