Louisiana Legends; Mickey Gilley

Funding for the production of Legends is provided in part by the Friends of LPB. In these anxious days, some Americans have turned to God, others to

gurus. But more and more turn to the cowboy hat. A cowboy hat? That's what Aaron Latham wrote in Esquire magazine about this brand-new phenomenon called the Urban Cowboy. Folks, meet the daddy of it all out of Ferriday, Louisiana, Mickey Gilley. How ya, Mickey? [Gilley] Thank you, Gus. We're glad to have you. Mickey, how in the world did one family produce these three cousins, Mickey Gilley, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Lee Lewis in Ferriday, Louisiana? Well, Gus, there's only about six months' difference in our age. I think Jimmy's the oldest, then there's Jerry and then there's of course, yours truly. We grew up in Ferriday in the Assembly of God Church and our family was very religious. The kind of music that was really exposed to as a kid when it was the gospel. You know, um, "I'll Fly Away" and "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," and this type of thing. Jerry Lee came along and started puttin' the, uh, the boogie woogie left-hand beat to some

of the music and as probably you know he got, uh, he had problems with the church when he was going to Bible School. And, of course, Jimmy also had some problems, I think, with the the Assembly of God because of the fact that he played that kind of music. Had it not been for Jerry Lee, I probably would not have gotten into the music industry. I was in Houston doing construction work when Jerry Lee hit with a "Whole Lot of Shakin'" and I decided that as a matter of speech throw my hat into the ring. And I got to where that I was having a good time with it. I enjoyed it. [Weill] Where'd y'all learn to play the piano? [Gilley] Well, I don't know whether Jerry Lee'll ever admit it. I don't know whether you've ever had him on the show or not. But, if he would admit it to you, he took a lot of the right-hand movements from Moon Mullican. And the boogie style from the, from the left-hand I guess he more or less sort of created his step because Moon used to play with a cut time beat, two-four. And we didn't have a band. So in order to have a rhythm thing going in the background

Jerry Lee came up with, you know, doing the left-hand boogie thing to keep the rhythm going. He would take slow songs even put this type of movement behind it. And you can hear it in some of, a lot of his earlier records. But whether he'll admit that or not I have no idea. [Weill] Did the church music influence your music? Well, it's kind of difficult to say. I was, like I said, I was raised very, in a very religious family. But I would guess that probably my cousin Jerry Lee, probably influenced me more than anybody else because I play a very similar style of piano, which we all sort of, you know, like picked up as a, as a, trio running around together. [Weill] That's astonishing, isn't it, that Jimmy would end up music also in the evangelical field, isn't that interesting? [Gilley] Well Jimmy, continuing on with the, with the religious work when he was in, when he was a kid. And Jerry and I sort of drifted away from the church. I mean I moved to Houston and Jerry Lee was playing the honky tonks in Natchez, Mississippi, and

the next thing I knew he was in Memphis recording for Sam Phillips. [Weill] Now you went to, you went from Ferriday to Houston and you decided to be a grease monkey. That's I think the job that you went to. [Gilley] Well, I called it construction work, but actually what it amounted to at that particular time back in the '50s was being more or less what they call an oiler. You know, it was greasing machines. [Weill] Mickey, the first time you went to Houston and out of Ferriday, if anybody would have told young Mickey Gilley, how old were you? [Gilley] I think I was 17 or 18. [Weill] If anybody would have said, Mickey Gilley, someday you're practically going to be the symbol of this whole Texas business, you'd a thought they were crazy. [Gilley] There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt about it. I think that something significant happened to you. You went to one of Jerry Lee's shows and you saw that he had a lot of money but a whole lot of money, you know, stacks. Is that correct? [Gilley] Well, I saw that he was doing quite well. I took him to the airport and I mean, you know, like I was living really, really on a very, very tight budget. And I didn't realize it was that kind of money in the music

industry. And, of course, when he went to buy his airplane ticket, he was working as a single. And, of course, you can make more money working as a single because you don't have any upkeep, you know, with a band and you, you know, you fly commercial. That's one thing I admire about Jerry Clark (?). I mean it's just him. You take Bill Cosby, it's just him. I mean these guys really make the money, but when you, when you take a performer that makes his living playing music, usually you have to carry a group with you. You have to carry people to handle the business for you. You have to provide transportation, rooms, and all this so it's not is as, you know, it is not as colorful as it really looks when you first look at it. But Jerry was traveling by himself and he reached into his pocket and I mean, you know, he had more money in his pocket than I'd ever seen in my life because, I mean, I came from a very poor family. And I said wow if he's making this kind of money it's, I'm in the wrong business. So that's, like I said, Jerry probably influenced me more than anything else. But then after I got into it I wanted.. [Weill] You'd been playing nightclubs in Houston, right? [Gilley] I started out playing the clubs, but I

needed the experience because, you know, I really didn't know what I was doing. My first endeavor was to make a recording. And the first record I ever made was probably the worst thing I'd ever done in my life, but it's a collector's item now. It's worth a lot of money. But the record is terrible. [Weill] What's the name of it in case some of my friends have it? [Gilley] It's called "Tell me why" and "Ooh we Baby." If they got one, I'm gonna tell them to hold on it because it's worth quite a bit of money. There was only 500 of them pressed and I think that there's only about two hundred and seventy or eighty in existence. [Weill] Okay, so you were playing in night clubs in Houston. How was it? Did you say, hey this is, this might be it. This is a way to make a living. I'm enjoying this. Did you take to it right off? I thought it was gonna be very easy because I could play my cousin's style of music and every time Jerry Lee would come with a recording, it was very easy for me to sit down and do like "A Whole Lotta Shakin'," "Great Balls of Fire,"Breathless," "You Win Again," "Break up," "High School Confidential" -- all the tunes he was recording. It was a lot easier for me to pick up and do that than it was to do anything else because it was already recorded and I could sit and listen to it and I said I can play that, you know, because I mean we grew up together. Let's face it.

Uh, I didn't realize at the time that everybody would think that I was trying to copy my cousin. I was just trying to do the songs that I felt like that people would listen to because Jerry Lee was so popular. And, consequently, I was able to hold down a good job as far as nightclubs were concerned. Then I began to program the music, whereas people could listen to it or dance to it and I would throw then the upbeat stuff for the crowd that liked the Jerry Lee thing. And then if I learned something new or something different I would pattern itit after some of Jerry Lee's slow stuff. [Weill] So what you were really doing was looking for Mickey Gilley's style. Your own voice, so to speak. [Gilley] What I was actually doing was I was copying my cousin and not realizing at the time. I think that I actually copied my cousin up until about 1974 when I recorded "A Roomful of Roses." "A Roomful of Roses" came out, a lot of people thought it was Jerry Lee because Jerry Lee had sort of gotten a little bit cold and all of a sudden I had this song "Roomful of Roses." We used to sing when we was kids growin' up, me and Jimmy and Jerry. All of us, we used to play these old songs [inaudible]

"Roomful of Roses," "You Win Again," "Cold, Cold." I mean, you know, all these old tunes that Hank Williams and Webb Pierce and all these people had these songs out, I mean. Jerry Lee would take 'em and change 'em a little bit and we'd jack around with 'em on the piano, you know. But when "Roomful of Roses" came out, I really thought it sounded too much like my cousin to be a hit record. But what happened on that particular recording was the fact that at that particular moment in the recording studio, I became Mickey Gilley. I relaxed and I began to sound like I did in a club. I wasn't doing one of Jerry Lee's songs. I was just doing an old song even though it was styled the same way that we all play. It happened to catch and that opened the door for me. [Weill] You drove to Philadelphia from Houston. You wanted to get on the American Bandstand. [Gilley] Yeah. [Weill] What happened? [Gilley] They turned me down. They wouldn't even listen to what I was doing and that was one particular point, too, where the unions was real tight and I didn't have any, I didn't have any pull

with anybody. [Weill] Was it a bitter disappointment? Was that a long ride back, so to speak? [Gilley] Well, it was, it was a big disappointment due to the fact that I mean, I was, I was so poor I didn't have any money. And I mean I was living off of credit cards and, as the time went along, I mean, the bills kept getting higher and higher and I couldn't afford to pay them because I had no income. So the next thing I knew they, they pulled all my credit cards away from me. [Weill] That business where you put yourself on the line every night, particularly when you were just getting started, you weren't THE Mickey Gilley, you were just Mickey Gilley, trying to get going. I suspect that that that must be a terrible beating, that a man's ego must have to take and it seems to me that must be one of the most strenuous of all. It looks so glamorous to those of us not in it, but I suspect when you're getting going that must be a brutally tough, tough game. [Gilley] Well it's very, very bad when you when you consider the fact that you're trying to promote a recording or you're in a certain place and you, you go to a TV

studio to, to do your recording and they don't know who you are. And as, as you know it's not being played here. We're not going to let you do it. You go to a radio station and they say I've never heard of you before, you know, and the chances are they won't even listen to it. That's, that's the bad part about it. It's very difficult to get started in something if you know nothing about it and I knew absolutely nothing about the recording industry. I mean, let's face it, Jerry Lee, his first record was on Sun Records and they had just come off of several hit records with Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips had sold Presley so Jerry Lee became the number one slot as far as promotion was concerned. [Weill] You know, I think one of the saddest sights I've ever seen was in Nashville all those kids walking around with guitars, you know, you can tell just looking for a break, looking for a little in of some kind, a toe in the door. [Gilley] Well, that happens all the time. It happens, uhh, it happens in every, uhh, city in the

United States. And there's a lot of great talent out there that, um, is not exposed due to the fact that people don't have enough confidence in them or they don't know the route to take. [Weill] Now you lived in New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, and you spent two years in Lake Charles, Louisiana, playing in, I think, a spot, huh? [Gilley] I started off in a lil' club in Lake Charles. This was really the first time that I had started making money playing and music and I started out at a little club called Ray's Lounge as a single act. I was playing like 30 minutes. Doing three shows a night, three 30-minute shows. That's all I needed because I didn't have enough repertoire except some gospel music, and I wasn't about to play a gospel song in a honky tonk. And this little lounge seated, I guess, about 85-90 people. That's when the air force base was doing real well there. Well, I went in doing, like I said, the boogie woogie piano, Jerry Lee's style of music. And I began to draw pretty good. I added a

drummer with me and I ended up lasting for two years in Lake Charles, so I knew that I was on the right road. It was just gradually putting the puzzle together to make it work. [Weill] Well, your first hit then was "Roomful of Roses." That was in 1974, and I think you've had 12 number one records since. Which is an astonishing accomplishment. [Gilley] Well, I've had quite a few number one records. "Roomful of Roses" started it off, but the reason why I think "Roomful of Roses" is such a big record for me was because in 1971 I met Mr. Cryer and we opened Gilley's. [Weill] Tell me about Gilley's. I've never been there. I've read about it. How big is the darn place and how many people does it hold? [Gilley] Well Gilley's will seat probably comfortable about 4,000 people, 3,500-4,000. [Weill] It's in Pasadena, Texas, right? [Gilley] Right. Now, of course, if you take up the dance floor and you set it up concert style, you can probably put somewhere between 5 to 5,500 in the club, but we've just finished

another project next door to Gilley's that's connected to the club that we call the rodeo arena. It'll seat in the stands alone 7,500 people and we just finished promoting a concert with Willie Nelson there. We intend to use the rodeo arena to promote concerts and rodeos. And Willie did extremely well for us. We have got a tentative date on Alabama. I think Alabama. I'm going to tour with Alabama in November, by the way, in California. But we got the both complexes together. Of course, Gilley's is a honkytonk and it's a place to let your hair down and have a good time. It's not a supper club. People come to the club and they say I can't believe Mickey Gilley's got his name on this club. This club is what got me started. It gives me something to grasp for and to look forward to. And the thing that helped me more than anything else was Mr. Cryer had enough confidence and enough belief in Mickey Gilley that we could do something together. He had tried to make this club work for about 15, 16, 17 years. It was right

down the street from the club that I played for 10 solid years called the [inaudible]. When I left the [inaudible], he contacted me. We put the puzzle together, him and I. It took both of us to do it. I mean it wasn't Mickey Gilley by hisself. It was his ideas, his promotional work, his belief that Mickey Gilley could do something and I went into the club with him. We put our ideas together. Some things didn't work. Some of them did. One of the things that worked for us that really helped us more than anything else was a little local television show we started locally and it was simply a matter of I was doing, I was a pitch man for a furniture company and I got to say, hey, folks I'll be at Gilley's tonight at 4500 Spencer Highway, you all come see us. [Weill] How about that mechanical bull? [Gilley] That was Mr. Cryer's idea. [Weill] Can you handle it? [Gilley] A mechanical bull is something that is a rodeo training device. I don't recommend anybody getting on a mechanical bull unless they start off real, real slow and learn how to ride it properly. It's a rodeo training device. It was built for a rodeo training device. It was not built for

an entertainment like a club. You know this particular thing was was put in the club to attract the Houston livestock show rodeo people that came in to the Houston area every year around, I think, in January, February. That's when they had the rodeo there, if I'm not mistaken. And anyway, not only did it attract the rodeo people but, it attracted everybody from around the country. I thought it was a mistake at first. Mr. Cryer said, "Look. You're gone, you're traveling now. We need something to, you know, pop the club loose". So he put this thing in. [Weill] The bull was a substitute for Mickey Gilley, in other words. [Gilley] You might say that. And then, of course, the bull turned everything around for us because that's how we got the article in Esquire Magazine with Aaron Latham. That's how we got the picture with John Travolta. [Weill] Let me ask you a question, Mickey. When did, when did doctors and pediatricians and politicians and housewives start showing up in Western garb, in cowboy clothes? When, when did you all begin to notice that,

that taking place? [Gilley] Well, I think a lot, a lot of things happened down the road with, with Willie Nelson. I think Willie Nelson had quite a bit to do with, with a movement toward what we're doing at the present time. I can't say that I had the hand in making the urban cowboy scene come alive because the only thing that happened with us was, I mean, we installed a mechanical bull and, of course, the people in Texas have been wearing cowboy hats and jeans for years and years and years, and they'll continue to do it. It just so happened that the rest of the country caught on to it because we brought it to a head. It was like... [Weill] In New York City, across from the Westbury Hotel on Madison Avenue, there of all unusual things is a Western clothing store owned by Billy Martin. It's astonishing in the midst of all those boutique and French couture clothing and so on. There's, it's really, it swept America, hasn't it?

[Weill] Well, it's, it's got a mystique about it. I think the people just wanted something different. [Weill] Question. You mentioned the word mystique. What would make an adult male and female put on it. Let's say he's an accountant. She's a nurse. What are - why do folks put on cowboy clothes? For example. I'm talking about regular folks, not entertainers, not cowboys. Is it to escape? To have fun? Is it games like children might play or is it a desire for the way things used to be? A simple time when a cowboy rode into town at sunset and bellied up to the bar. [Gilley] Well, I think the person that really, really enjoys Western clothes, it's more of the enjoyment of getting back to the simple way of life. [Weill] Right. [Gilley] Now the people that...I have some people that are friends of mine that are very wealthy and they go way, way to the extreme, you know. I mean, in other words, it's got to be a lot of flash. To me, the real cowboy and, you know, I don't consider myself a real.. because I've never went out

and rode horses and roped cows and that type of thing. I enjoy the jeans. I enjoy the simple life. [Weill] You have your own line, don't you? [Gilley] Well, I have my own. Yeah. I'm wearing a pair of Gilley jeans right now. But I mean I have worn jeans since I was a kid. Now when I went in the entertainment field and when "A Roomful of Roses" hit, I thought I had to have all these sequined things, you know. And I went, I went to California and I had them make all these fancy suits and I wore leather for a while and I was looking for something, you know. Finding myself. When Willie Nelson walked out on the CMA Awards show a few years back and I was there to do a little stint with, with Milsap and Gary Stewart. Everybody was running backstage just then, and did Willie bring any clothes? Did Willie Nelson bring any clothes? And here was Willie wearing his bandanna around his head with his little ponytail and his, you know, I don't... I forgot now he had a jersey or something on and just tennis shoes and I do believe that this is one thing that captured America with Willie Nelson was because I mean I've been a fan of his, you know, since the '60s. Not only is he a great singer, great

songwriter, and a great stylist, but, I mean, he walked out there and how many entertainers would have had enough guts to walk on that stage at the CMA awards show with all these millions of people live and do "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" like he was dressed. And I said, I was sitting there backstage and I'm saying "Get 'em, Willie, Get 'em," you know. Everybody in the country said hey, he went against the grain, you know, he went against everybody. [Weill] Do you think it was a victory for individuality? [Gilley] I think, I do definitely do so. [Weill] Being what he wants to be or she wants to be. [Gilley] After the "Urban Cowboy" film came out, and I even wore some things in the film the "Urban Cowboy" when I was doing my bit like a tux without a hat, and the whole bit, and when I saw that the "Urban Cowboy" thing was capturing the nation with such a big bang, that's when I threw everything that I had in the closet and I said, "Hey I'm going back to the jeans and things that I really feel comfortable in." I mean, you know, I dressed as simple as anybody can dress and I...and you know... [Weill] You're a lot more comfortable than I am in this silly necktie. I'm against neckties.

[Gilley] Well, I mean, it's just like the hat, you know. A lot of people say, well... I mean I got a full head of hair. I don't need to wear a hat. I wear a hat because I enjoy it. Now when I, when I work the casinos in Nevada, a lot of times I'll wear my hat on stage and then when I get ready to go into the casino, I might dress little bit different and not wear my hat because a lot of people don't recognize you, unless they see you dressed the way you really are. [Weill] What kind of guy was John Travolta to work with? [Gilley] Well, I used to take a lot of pride in saying, you know, like the press is usually always right about what they write about people, but they wrote some things about John Travolta when we were doing the "Urban Cowboy" film that I knew that was an out-and-out lie. And one of them came out, well some of them, little lines in a newspaper here and there because they were, they were reporting what was already been printed like what was in Esquire magazine that had him throwing tantrums because he wanted this, he wanted that. That was an out-and-out lie. The man worked. He worked as hard as I've ever seen anybody work. And I sat and talked to him because he's a pilot, I'm a pilot, and we got to fly a little bit

together and we got to be alone, you know, and I got to talk to him a few minutes and I said, "John," I said "It's awful hot in Gilley's," and I said "How do you stand it?", you know because I had to turn all the air conditioning off and they had people over there, you know, wiping the perspiration off of you and the whole bit. And he says, "If you think this was hot," he said, "you should have been with me when I did Saturday Night Fever." He said it was ungodly and that point right there is when I began to admire a man that got out there and did all those hoedown dances as hot as it was. We were doing this in the summertime. You know how hot it gets in Houston. Gilley's is a metallic structure. All the air conditioning off and it's got, you know, like an acoustical top in it. But once it gets hot in there, it's hot. [Weill] You've achieved great success in your profession. You look like a man who's completely on top of himself. You're in total control of yourself in this interview. What's in the future for you? What do you want to do? What possible challenges? Some more hit records?

[Gilley] Well, I'd like to do a little more acting. I had, I had the pleasure of working on the thing with Lee Majors in "The Fall Guy" which was actually my first acting debut. I call it my first because the thing I did with John Travolta in the film the "Urban Cowboy" was not acting. I didn't have to memorize lines, and I didn't have to go to acting coach and say hey, look, because I was doing a particular thing that I had done all my life on the stage... introducing you know the Dolly Parton lookalikes and introducing the entertainers. That was, that's more or less, like you say, a piece of cake. It was nothing to it, you know. When I did the thing on "The Fall Guy" with Lee Majors, it was something that I really, really enjoyed doing. I had a good time doing it. I was scared to death because I'd never been even in a school play especially, you know, here I am. I'm sitting here and they turn the cameras on and I hear this little beep, beep. Action and you've got to go into your spiel and you gotta look like you're doing it, you know. So it was different. My second acting role has been with Ricardo and Herve Villechaize in "Fantasy Island" and I think that

I did a better job acting in "Fantasy Island" than I did in "The Fall Guy" due to the fact that I had one under my belt. Now, I would like to do some more because I like to see improvement. It's like in your recordings. When I met Jim Ed Norman and I started doing my recording with Jim Ed, I think my last three albums have been the best recordings I've ever made since I've been in the music industry. I'm not copying my cousin Jerry Lee. I think I have found Mickey Gilley, like and that's all that matters to me. You know, "You Don't Know Me," "Put Your Dreams Away," those type of songs. [Weill] In your spare time, what do you do to relax? [Gilley] Well, I love to play golf. I mean I'm, I'm a golf freak. I'm a terrible golfer, but I love it. I study it. I watch people. I watch the pros play. I read about it, you know. The other thing that I love and enjoy is flying. I fly my own airplane. Of course, I have a pilot, but I mean I can fly my own airplane. I have a, I have a twin rating and I have an instrument rating and I'm getting ready to start working on my commercial. And if I get my commercial, then I'm going to go for my ATP. [Weill] You really will. You're going to go all the way to...

[Gilley] It's something to look forward to, and something you enjoy, you love to do, and it's a hobby. [Weill] How do you think you and your cousins picked up that ambition because now I've had the opportunity to interview you and Jimmy Swaggart. I have not had Jerry Lee Lewis although we want him on this program. [Gilley] What you ought to do is get all three of us together. [Weill] Oh, what a good idea. Where do you think that drive comes from? You're all men who obviously have the need to succeed. [Gilley] Well... [Weill] Is that born in you? [Gilley] I can only speak for myself. I'm a Pisces. I'm a dreamer. And anything short of perfection is something I can't deal with. I mean everything that I do has got to be the best I can possibly do it. I mean I shoot usually in the 90s in golf and I want to shoot consistently in the 80s. If I get to the 80s, I want to shoot in the 70s. If I get in the 70s, I want to try and break and shoot, I mean, you know, I'd be like a pro. I mean I'm never satisfied with my performance. I want to get better and better and better. And, uh, I think Jimmy is also a Pisces. I think his birthday is March 15th. Mine's March 9th.

Jerry's, I think, is in September. [Weill] Mine is March the 12th. I wonder why something good doesn't happen to me. I hate to disillusion you, but I don't think it's completely that. It might have something to do with talent, a minor detail. Let me ask you this because it's something very personal. I think that Hank Williams was perhaps the greatest American poet, as well as songwriter. Do you, are you a Hank Williams fan? [Gilley] I totally agree. In fact, I make a statement in my show. I do a Willie Nelson tune and I said folks, this is, this song written by a gentleman I consider one of the greatest songwriters since Hank Williams. And I've said that for many, many years. I think Hank Williams is probably one of the greatest, like you said, poets or writers or whatever because he said so much. [Weill] Mickey, we're very glad that you took time out from an incredible schedule to be with us today and to let your fellow Louisianans have some insight into you and you're obviously a man who hasn't achieved it all yet and you're going to get there and you're well on your way. I think you qualify as a

Louisiana Legend and thank you for being with us. [Gilley] Well, I appreciate that. I enjoyed it very much, Gus, and thanks for having me on. [Weill] Good. Funding for the production of Legends is provided in part by the Friends of LPB.