As a Singer-Musician, Mickey Gilley’s Adequate, but Is He Original? Nope

Mickey Gilley has charted 16 No. 1 records on the country hit parade since 1974. But unlike his cousin, Jerry Lee Lewis, he hasn’t done it by creating anything new or original.

Gilley is a musician in the simplest sense of the word: He takes songs other people have written (and in many cases, songs others have already made into hits) and re-records them. Monday night, before a capacity crowd at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana, backed by a five-piece band and two female singers, he offered several of these familiar numbers: Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me,” Kenny Rogers’ “Blaze of Glory,” Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways.”

Gilley’s voice is an adequate instrument, and on a couple of occasions he played a mean piano (notably on the excellent “Don’t All The Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time,” as he emulated his cousin’s flashy, foot-heavy style to perfection).

There were other points at which his material rose above the mediocre. Gilley is fond of ‘50s-style arrangements (though he leans on his female backups to make these songs go).

“Full Grown Fool” and a rollicking Cajun number (replete with fiddle) were much better than your average country pop. And there were some nice ‘50s arrangements, of which Gilley is evidently fond (though, again, he has to lean on those backup singers to make the songs really go).

But when he played a mid-tempo medley of such bland, boring ballads as “Lonely Nights,” “Talk To Me” and “Put Your Dreams Away,” his talent seemed minor at best. Gilley apparently lacks the musical verve to distinguish most of his song list from masses of similarly faceless stuff.

Between songs, he cracked jokes at everyone’s expense: his own, his band’s, and, most interestingly, at those of Jerry Lee and yet another famous cousin of his, the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart. (He noted, without irony, that “my cousin Jimmy Lee makes more money than both Jerry Lee and I put together.”)

After commenting that he and his cousins grew up together in Ferriday, La., where they chased the same girls, he cracked, “Jerry Lee actually caught some of ‘em.”