Mickey Gill, the country singer who helped inspire “Urban Cowboy”, has died at age 86.

Country star Mickey Gill, whose Texas honik-tonk was inspired by the 1980 film. urban cowboy And the national wave of Western community nightclubs died. He was 86 years old.

Gillie died Saturday in Branson, Missouri, where he helped Mickey Gillie direct the Big Shanghai Theatre. He performed last month but had health problems last week.

“He walked quietly with family and close friends,” Mickey Gilley Associates said in a statement.

Cousin of rock and roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, Guillem opened Gilley’s, the world’s biggest horn, in Pasadena, Texas, in the early 1970s. By the mid-1970s, he owned a successful club and had his first commercial success with “Room Cheio de Rosas”. He regularly released country hits including “Window Up Above”, “She’s Pulling Me Again” and the anthem “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time”.

In all, he had 39 country top 10 hits and 17 number one songs. He received awards from the Academy of Music of the Six Countries and also worked occasionally as an actor. The murder you wrote, autumn boy, fantasy Island s dukes of danger.

“If I had one wish in life, I wish I had more time,” Gilli told the Associated Press in March 2001, as he celebrated his 65th birthday. Not that he did anything else, the singer said.

“I do exactly what I want to do. “I play golf, fly my plane and play my theater in Branson, Missouri,” he said. “I love doing my show for people.”

Meanwhile, gigantic nighttime attractions, including its famous mechanical bull, made for 1980s filming. urban cowboyStarring John Travolta and Debra Winger, and considered by many to be an artificial version of Travolta’s 1977 nightclub, ᲨSaturday night heat. The film, inspired by the Gill Club, was based on a Wear Aaron Latham’s article on the club’s two regular relationships.

“Thanks to John Travolta for keeping my career going every night before I go to bed,” Gill told the AP in 2002. “It’s impossible to say how grateful I am for my involvement. urban cowboy. “This film had a huge impact on my career and still has.”

The soundtrack featured hits such as “Lookin’ for Love” by Johnny Lee, “Look What You’ve Done for Me” by Bose Skegs and “Stand by Me” by Gill. The film turned the Pasadena Club into a late-night tourist raffle and promoted pearl T-shirts, long-sleeved beers, steel guitars and mechanical bulls across the country.

But the club closed in 1989 after Gilles and his partner Sherwood Krayer fell out over how to run the venue. The fire soon destroyed it.

In 2003, an upscale version of the former Gilley’s nightclub opened in Dallas. In recent years, Gill has moved to Branson.

He has been married three times, most recently to Cindy Lob Gill. He had four children, three with his first wife, Geraldine Garrett, and one with his second, Vivian MacDonald.

Natches, a native of Gillia, Mississippi, grew up poor, studying Boogie-Vogue piano in Fereis, Louisiana, with Louis and his cousin Jimmy Swagart, a future evangelist. Like Lewis, he escaped through Louisiana club windows to listen to rhythm and blues. He moved to Houston to work on construction, but spent the night playing on stage at a local club and recording and touring began over the years in the 1970s.

Gilles has had health problems in recent years. He underwent brain surgery in August 2008 after specialists diagnosed him with hydrocephalus, a condition characterized by increased fluid in the skull. Gill was suffering from short-term memory loss and asked for the operation to stop the onset of dementia.

He underwent multiple surgeries in 2009 after falling off his leg, forcing him to cancel scheduled performances at Branson. In 2018, he suffered a fractured ankle and right shoulder during a car accident.