Lee Ellis, Houston’s Godfather of Comfort-Food Chic, Has Died

COUNTRY MUSIC SUPERSTAR Mickey Gilley, whose eponymous Houston area mega-honkytonk was the backdrop of Urban Cowboy and at the center of the global blue-jeans-and-mechanical-bull phenom of the 1980s, has died at age 86, according to news reports. The blues-tinged crooner and ivory tickler had 39 top-ten country hits, 17 of which were number-ones such as “Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time” and his cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me.”

Gilley, who spoke in the past with CityBook and the CityBook & Co. podcast, first came to the Houston area in the early ’50s, to work for his then father-in-law in construction. It was only a few years later when one of his cousins — eventual Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Lee Lewis, with whom he grew up “banging at the piano” in the tiny town of Ferriday, La., he said — hit big with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”

Martha Turner, who for the last 40 years, has been virtually synonymous with luxury residential real estate in Houston, has died at age 81, according to numerous reports.

Turner, a former music teacher from Hemphill who once lived in a mobile home and sold wigs to make ends meet, founded an eponymous company that today is worth billions — and one that's credited for changing the way real estate is sold.