Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Sherwood Cryer, R. I. P.

Former owner of Gilley's dies at 81 | Pasadena/Baytown news | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "Sherwood Cryer, whose honky-tonk Gilley's created a lasting image of the Houston area as a blue-collar, redneck boomtown after it was immortalized in the movie Urban Cowboy, has died. He was 81.
[. . . .]
“He was dumb like a fox,” said Sandy Brokaw, the public relations manager for Cryer and his partner Mickey Gilley, for whom the bar was named. “He didn't say much, but he was one of the smartest people I ever knew, a welder by day who put that club together at night. He was a marketing genius.”

Cryer's genius was most evident in the mechanical bull he invented, the bucking, spinning mechanical ride that brought lines of people into the Pasadena bar and made for Urban Cowboy's most memorable scenes — John Travolta, Debra Winger and Scott Glenn taking turns atop it. He and employees would scour area streets for padding for it."

2 comments:

BOBO said...

"Sure Wood, No Cryer" (Sherwood Cryer) U R Band Cowboy!!! (Urban Cowboy)... I frequented Gilley's from 1978-1982 and was recruited by Pasty Swayze to meet Director James Bridges and to be assist with the choreography of training the clowns to for the mechanical bull riding scenes in the movies. On several ocassions, I had the opportunity to be in the club after hours and view Sherwood making his point known and understood to the folks around the club! Sherwood was normally a very quiet man with few words, but when he spoke his vocabularly was limited and there was no misunderstanding about what he said or meant. I saw him help several people financially and only told them if he found out they lied about the circumstances that he helped with, their circumstances would be much worse than they ever were before. Many tales fact & fiction, have been told about Sherwood, but I just wanted to say, If he didn't make it to Heaven, the world can rest assured, that he has made a deal for some acreage in hell and that there too, the "Girls will all get prettier at closing time." Thank you Sherwood Cryer for shareing an era of time in life for a life time's era. Jim BOBO Richardson Professional Rodeo Clown

Unknown said...

Thanks for the insights!