Almost 80, Mickey Gilley ready to rock Alabama Theatre stage

Mickey Gilley would love to extend the title from the retrospective CMT series that aired earlier this summer, “Urban Cowboy: The Rise and Fall of Gilley’s.”

“The Rise and Fall, and New Beginning,” he suggested earlier last month, in this 35th anniversary year of the “Urban Cowboy” movie that starred John Travolta and Debra Winger with an all-star music soundtrack cast to boot.

In a phone call from Branson, Mo., where he first opened a theater in 1990, Gilley said that “very good documentary” has given the movie and the former nightclub that bears his surname in other places nationwide, a rebirth, especially because “a lot of people hadn’t seen” the movie.

At 7 p.m. Friday at the Alabama Theatre in North Myrtle Beach, he plans to weave all 17 of his No. 1 country hits in concert with various memories that even go international, surprising him still.

Gilley, who remains grateful for an appearance in 2011 on the third season of “American Pickers,” with a focus on the former famous Gilley’s honky tonk in Pasadena, Texas, said that cameo generated a flood of fanfare.

“I’ve had more comments on that show than anything I’ve ever done,” he said, counting his various guest TV acting roles such as “Murder She Wrote,” “Fantasy Island” and “The Fall Guy.”

“Can you believe I’d live long enough to make the History Channel?” he asked, ready to turn 80 in March.

Looking at a “country scene that has changed so much” since he broke through in the mid-1970s with such hits as “Roomful of Roses,” “City Lights,” “Bring It On Home to Me” and “She’s Pulling Me Back Again,” Gilley brought up style points. He said he was glad to be in the forefront when a look framed by a cowboy hat, with jeans and boots “came into style,” all fueled by “Urban Cowboy.”

Taking concertgoers on “a musical journey,” Gilley will reach all the way back to the 1950s, when he played on his first recording, meeting such icons as Loretta Lynn and the late Conway Twitty, and other stories from an industry that has made transitions that never stop.

He brought up that country acts back then never sold out stadiums the way that Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift do in this decade of this century.

Songs ‘people can relate to’

The music of the time, including his recording of Baker Knight’s “Don’t The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time?” also fit Gilley just right, and a record label executive, Jim Ed Norman, widened Gilley’s approach as an artist.

“That’s what I feel like with country music,” Gilley said. “It’s about finding songs people can relate to.”

Gilley joked that before his “Roomful of Roses” hit “took off,” he hadn’t realized he was performing inadvertently in tribute to his fellow Louisiana native cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, but then again, they each, along with their gospel-singing cousin, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, made a difference in American music. Lewis also made the inaugural inductee class, from 1986, in the the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

“It’s almost like fiction,” Gilley said, “that three guys who grew up together had this success in the music industry.”

An aviator, Gilley was taken by Travolta’s wherewithal as well. When “Urban Cowboy” was filmed, the actor was working on his pilot’s license, so “I got to go flying with him,” Gilley said.

A fan of Travolta’s hit string of movies, begun in the late 1970s with “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease,” and especially “Pulp Fiction,” from 1994, Gilley said he’s delighted how “Urban Cowboy” has turned into a cult classic and that “people still relate to that film.”

The soundtrack, for which Gilley furnished two recordings – “Here Comes the Hurt Again” and a cover of “Stand By Me” – came with other stars and crossover hits as Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance?” Kenny Rogers’ “Love the World Away,” and what Gilley called “one of the best songs on there,” Boz Scaggs’ “Look What You’ve Done to Me.”

Gilley called his longevity in music spanning more than a half-century “a whirlwind,” begun from a time when he made a record in the late 1950s in Houston, when Kenny Rogers played bass in the band with older brother Lelan Rogers.

“I’ve lived more than you can imagine,” Gilley said.

This story was originally published August 27, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "Almost 80, Mickey Gilley ready to rock Alabama Theatre stage."