When my family moved to El Paso from Germany in early 1981,
we landed in the middle of a country and western fashion and music movement
popularized by the movie Urban Cowboy. Aside
from Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and John Denver, I wasn't a fan of country
music, and I especially wasn't a fan of contemporary country music. It's not that I had anything in particular
against it, it's just that I was a fifteen year old rock and roll fan with
Molly Hatchet, Judas Priest, and Aerosmith in my musical diet and if I was at
all looking for the next big thing, it was going to be in the New Wave direction,
not country. Even so, I wasn't so rigid
in my musical and fashion sense that I was opposed entirely to going with the
flow. I soon owned a cowboy hat with a
ridiculous feather hatband, a pair of cowboy boots, western shirts and jeans,
and a fancy leather belt with a belt buckle that featured my name. Also, when the girl I was infatuated with at
the moment at Andress High School, Virginia, excitedly told me that Mickey
Gilley and Johnny Lee were coming to town, I was all onboard for begging my Mom to buy
tickets for us.
Prior to being swept along by the Urban Cowboy tidal wave,
I'd never heard of Mickey Gilley or Johnny Lee, but now that their songs were
ubiquitous on the radio and they were impossible to ignore, I was genuinely
excited to be seeing them in concert.
And the fact that I had a "date" for the show made it even
more exciting.
It was raining the night of the concert, and my
parents drove Virginia and I to the UTEP Special Events Center in El Paso in
our family's new white Chevy Citation.
Virginia and I used an umbrella provided by her mother to get inside the
venue, and once inside we quickly found our seats, which were more or less center-stage
and half-way back.
Johnny Lee opened the show and was an entertaining and
easy-going performer. He played his
hits, of course. "Lookin' for
Love" and "Cherokee Fiddle" were especially anticipated and
appreciated, but his entire set was
warmly received. I found him to be a
text-book example of a good middle-of-the-road country and western singer, and
enjoyed his performance, as did Virginia.
Next, Mickey Gilley hit the stage behind the piano with his
rave-up song "Don't the Girls All Look Prettier at Closing
Time." It was a great way to
kick-start the set, with his fingers feverishly flying across the keys in a
style reminiscent of his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis. The rest of his set list did not reach as fast
of a tempo, but instead reflected the songs of a man firmly entrenched in the
country and western honky-tonk tradition while occasionally offering a smooth
country take on classic R&B, as with his current hit with the Ben E. King
classic "Stand by Me." When he
left the stage, Virginia and I had no complaints and applauded as
enthusiastically as the rest of the audience.
The stars of Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee shone brightest
for the few years that the Urban Cowboy trend gripped the popular culture, but
they never faded away completely and both men still have performing careers to this day, thanks in
part to the entertainment destination, Branson, Missouri. Their names are clearly etched in country and
western history, and I'm glad to have seen them when I did.
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