Mickey Gilley: Country Music Legend and Nightclub Pioneer (1936–2022)

Mickey Leroy Gilley, country musician and namesake of Gilley’s nightclub in Pasadena, Texas, was born on March 9, 1936, in Natchez, Mississippi. He was the youngest of four children of Arthur Philmore Gilley and Irene Frances (Lewis) Gilley. He grew up in Ferriday, Louisiana, and spent much of his childhood with first cousin and future famous musician Jerry Lee Lewis and a first cousin once removed, the future evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Gilley learned to play piano at an early age, and, as a youngster, also secretly listened to the blues music that emanated from nightclubs in the area. He attended Ferriday High School but did not graduate. On February 14, 1953, Mickey Gilley married Geraldine Garrett in Louisiana. They later had three children but divorced in 1961.

Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Houston where Gilley secured a job working for his father-in-law in the construction industry. Inspired by Jerry Lee Lewis’s growing success, in 1957 Gilley cut his first record, “Ooh We Baby,” which began a succession of single releases on various labels. He also traveled and played clubs when he was not working in his job. He was listed as a musician, for example, in the 1959 city directory of Lake Charles, Louisiana. On December 27, 1962, he married Vivian Lorene McDonald in Fort Bend County, Texas. They had a son. Gilley released his first album, Lonely Wine (described as a combination of rock-and-roll, rhythm-and-blues, and country), in 1964. Residing in Harris County, he became a regular performer at the Nesadel Club in Pasadena, a community near Houston. In the early 1970s he opened a show for Conway Twitty, who then secured a booking agent for him.

While Gilley cultivated a successful singing career, he is perhaps best remembered for being the namesake of Gilley’s nightclub in Pasadena. He and business partner Sherwood Cryer opened the club in 1970 at 4500 Spencer Highway, and the venue gave Gilley a place to record and play his music. He released the album Mickey at Gilley’s in 1971. Billed as “the world’s largest honky tonk,” the nightclub drew other major country stars to perform, including Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, and Willie Nelson. In 1974 Gilley released “Room Full of Roses,” which became his first Number 1 country single, and he issued an album by the same name. He won that year’s Most Promising Male Vocalist from the Academy of Country Music. Billboard named him the Top New Country Artist for 1975. A string of hit songs followed, including “City Lights,” “Window Up Above,” and “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time,” which won the Academy of Country Music’s Song of the Year in 1976. He also won Album of the Year for Gilley’s Smoking as well as honors for Entertainer of the Year, Top Male Vocalist of the Year, and Single Record of the Year for “Bring It on Home to Me.”

While Gilley’s was popular in the Houston area, the nightclub became famous nationally thanks to a 1978 Esquire magazine article, “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy,” written by Aaron Latham. The article was the basis for a film, Urban Cowboy (1980), starring John Travolta and Debra Winger. Gilley played himself in the movie and appeared on the film’s highly successful soundtrack. His cover of “Stand by Me,” became another Number 1 country hit, went platinum, and also had crossover appeal, reaching Number 22 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

“I thank John Travolta every night before bed for keeping my career alive,” Gilley said 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.”

Gilley and Cryer eventually had a falling out. Gilley believed Cryer did not keep up the nightclub (such as the bathrooms) and present quality acts, among other issues. In 1988 Gilley sued to gain control of the nightclub. The jury awarded Gilley the nightclub and forced Cryer to pay Gilley $17 million. Gilley ran the nightclub for a short time, but a fire destroyed it in 1990. He subsequently opened Gilley’s Dallas in 2003 and opened clubs in Las Vegas and Oklahoma in the 2010s.

In total, Gilley won six awards from the Academy of Country Music. He had seventeen Number 1 songs and thirty-nine songs on the Top 10 country charts. In 1984 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into the Delta Music Museum Hall of Fame in Ferriday, Louisiana, in 2002.

Gilley continued touring and performing after the nightclub closed. He built the Mickey Gilley Grand Shanghai Theatre in Branson, Missouri, which became a popular place for assorted music acts. He did occasional acting jobs throughout his career and appeared in episodes of Fantasy Island; The Fall Guy; Murder, She Wrote; and other television series. A fall in 2009 caused temporary paralysis and permanent spinal damage that prevented him from playing piano, but he continued to sing and later in life averaged up to 130 performances a year. He was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2011. He released his last album, Two Old Cats, in 2018. After his wife’s death in 2019, Gilley married Cindy Loeb in June 2020.

Mickey Leroy Gilley died of bone cancer on May 7, 2022, in Springfield, Missouri, which is north of Branson. He was eighty-six years old and was buried at Grand View Memorial Park in Pasadena. A street in that city was renamed Mickey Gilley Boulevard in his honor.