by HB Auld, Jr.
As many know by now, we lost the amazing Country and Western singer Mickey Gilley yesterday. Mickey Gilley was 86.
I had the good fortune to meet Mickey several times in the 1960s when he and his buddy, Bob Luman, would stop in at KDET AM-930 in Center, TX, where I worked. Bob’s first cousin was Royce Luman, our station Program Director, and Mickey and Bob would stop in whenever they were in the East Texas area.
Mickey Gilley was cousins with Jerry Lee Lewis and with evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. He learned to play the piano at an early age from Jerry Lee and continued Jerry’s boogie-woogie style of playing. His Country and Western nightclub in Pasadena, TX, was originally “Sherri’s Club,” named for his partner Sherwood Cryer. Later, it became Gilley’s with the reputation as the “World’s Biggest Honky Tonk.” It featured a mechanical bull, later made famous in the movie, “Urban Cowboy.”
Mickey Gilley died May 7, 2022, in Branson, MO.
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