Country singer Mickey Gilley passes away

Country singer Mickey Gilley, whose namesake Texas-sized honky-tonk bar was the birthplace of the "Urban Cowboy" music and fashion fads of the 1980s, died at age 86 in Branson, Missouri, his Facebook page announced on Saturday.

Gilley, a first cousin of both rock 'n' roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, "had just come off the road ... having played 10 shows in April," his Facebook page said.

An employee at the Mickey Gilley Theater in Branson confirmed he had died but did not know the cause of death.

Gilley's country hits included up-tempo honky-tonk songs such as "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time" and "The Power of Positive Drinkin'" and ballads like "A Headache Tomorrow (Or a Heartache Tonight)." But he was best known as owner of the bar that inspired "Urban Cowboy," the 1980 film starring John Travolta who danced with Debra Winger and rode a mechanical bull that bucked and tried to throw him off.

A native of Natchez, Mississippi, Gilley grew up in Ferriday, Louisiana, son of Arthur Fillmore Gilley and Irene (Lewis) Gilley, who taught him to play piano. He moved to the Houston, Texas, area, where he worked day jobs and sang and played piano in bars at night.

In 1970 he and a partner opened a nightclub in the blue-collar Houston suburb of Pasadena and named it Gilley's. It was a cavernous place with a corrugated-metal roof and concrete floors, open from 10 a.m. until 2 a.m. As it became popular, capacity crowds came out to see Gilley sing and play piano, as well as catch the biggest names in country music perform there.