NEW YORK — Country star Mickey Gilley, whose namesake Texas honky-tonk impressed the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy” and a nationwide wave of Western-themed nightspots, has died. He was 86.
Gilley died Saturday in Branson, Missouri, the place he helped run the Mickey Gilley Grand Shanghai Theatre. He had been performing as not too long ago as final month, however was in failing well being over the previous week.
“He passed peacefully with his family and close friends by his side,” in accordance a press release from Mickey Gilley Associates.
Gilley — cousin of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee (*86*) — opened Gilley’s, “the world’s largest honky tonk,” in Pasadena, Texas, within the early Nineteen Seventies. By mid-decade, he was a profitable membership proprietor and had loved his first industrial success with “Room Full of Roses.” He started turning out country hits recurrently, together with “Window Up Above,” “She’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 acquired six Academy of Country Music Awards, and in addition labored once in a while 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 informed The Associated Press in March 2001 as he celebrated his sixty fifth birthday. Not that he’d do something in a different way, the singer stated.
“I am doing exactly what I want to do. I play golf, fly my airplane and perform at my theater in Branson, Missouri,” he stated. “I love doing my show for the people.”
Meanwhile, the large nightspot’s sights, together with its famed mechanical bull, led to the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” starring John Travolta and Debra Winger and regarded by many as a countrified model of Travolta’s 1977 disco smash, “Saturday Night Fever.” The movie impressed by Gilley’s membership was primarily based on an Esquire article by Aaron Latham concerning the relationship between two regulars at the membership.
“I thank John Travolta every night before bed for keeping my career alive,” Gilley informed the AP in 2002. “It’s impossible to tell you how grateful I am for my involvement with ‘Urban Cowboy.’ That film had a huge impact on my career, and still does.”
The soundtrack included 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 film turned the Pasadena membership into an in a single day vacationer draw and popularized pearl snap shirts, longneck beers, the metal guitar and mechanical bulls throughout the country.
But the membership shut down in 1989 after Gilley and his enterprise associate Sherwood Cryer feuded over the best way to run the place. A hearth destroyed it quickly after.
An upscale model of the outdated Gilley’s nightclub opened in Dallas in 2003. In latest years, Gilley moved to Branson.
He was married thrice, most not too long ago to Cindy Loeb Gilley. He had 4 kids, three together with his first spouse, Geraldine Garrett, and one together with his second, Vivian McDonald.
A Natchez, Mississippi, native, Gilley grew up poor, studying boogie-woogie piano in Ferriday, Louisiana, alongside (*86*) and fellow cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the long run evangelist. Like (*86*), he would sneak into the home windows of Louisiana golf equipment to hearken to rhythm and blues. He moved to Houston to work building however performed the native membership scene at night time and recorded and toured for years earlier than catching on within the ’70s.
Gilley had suffered well being issues in recent times. He underwent mind surgical procedure in August 2008 after specialists recognized hydrocephalus, a situation characterised by a rise in fluid within the skull. Gilley had been affected by short-term reminiscence loss, and credited the surgical procedure with halting the onset of dementia.
He underwent extra surgical procedure in 2009 after he fell off a step, forcing him to cancel scheduled performances in Branson. In 2018, he sustained a fractured ankle and fractured proper shoulder in an car accident.