Post by petrolino on Jan 21, 2018 4:23:55 GMT
Mac Davis turns 76 today. He was born in Lubbock, Texas where there's a street named after him, just like Buddy Holly. A diner in Lubbock sold a burger special named the Big Mac Davis in his honour. Davis sang for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. His best known acting roles include Ted Kotcheff's cult hit 'North Dallas Forty' (1979) and the crime sequel 'Sting II' (1983). He played Will Rogers on Broadway in 'The Will Rogers Follies'. He presented 'The Mac Davis Show' in the 1970s. His passion for music led him to record tunes like 'I Believe In Music', 'Hooked On Music' and 'Rock N Roll (I Gave You The Best Years Of My Life)'. He's also been political and socially minded with music, recording controversial tunes like 'Naughty Girl' and 'Lucas The Redneck'.
Davis was born the exact same day as Motown artist Edwin Starr. He wrote a lot of songs covered by other artists and also co-wrote tunes too, for example, 'A Little Less Conversation' with Billy Strange of the Wrecking Crew. One of the internet's top memes has been a budget joke regarding Mac Davis and Burt Reynolds. It's said both men went up for some of the same roles in the late 1970s but box-office Burt proved to be stiff competition (he's currently filming 'The French Cowboy' with Bruce Davison and John Savage).
"Mac Davis has been a successful and respected songwriter for almost 50 years. In 1969, he broke through as a top songwriter for Elvis Presley, writing the hits “In The Ghetto,” “Don’t Cry Daddy” and “Memories.” Since then, Davis has written several hits for himself as an an artist (“Baby, Don’t Get Hooked On Me,” “Stop and Smell the Roses”), plus songs for a wide range of other artists. Notably, he has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Still active and going strong, Davis has displayed his versatility and skills as a contemporary songwriter, by collaborating with a variety of current artists. Certainly, Davis is the only songwriter who wrote hits for Elvis Presley, who has also co-written songs with Avicii, Bruno Mars and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer."
- Dale Kawashima, Songwriter Universe
- Dale Kawashima, Songwriter Universe
"Mac Davis remembers Lubbock. Before there were gold records, there were car hoods used as sleds when snow covered the only nearby hills at Mackenzie Park. Before writing his first song, he learned the blues from a black man working on his construction crew. And before Davis embraced the blue skies of southern California, there were dirt clods and dust storms. Asked for memories of growing up in Lubbock in the 1950s, Davis said, "In those days, it was all about football, rodeo and fistfights." As for his even younger days, he recalls mostly the dirt. Davis was born in a "little bitty, tiny house on Seventh Street" in 1942. But when he turned 5, his dad bought a motel called College Courts, located on the corner of Fifth Street and College (now University) Avenue. "I got to go out and clean and sanitize trash barrels, so I developed a good relationship with flies early on," he said. The Davis family lived in rooms separated from the motel office only by a curtain. "My earliest memory of Lubbock was shoveling sand. ... We lived across the street from Jones Stadium, and back then the stadium parking lot was all dirt. And most of it blew right at us," he said. "My sister, Linda, and I hauled tons of sand (from the motel grounds). We'd carry the dirt back across Fifth Street and just dump it." He added, "There was nothing to protect you from sandstorms back then. I think I still have some grit in my teeth." Davis would, on occasion, visit his mother in Georgia, where he said he developed into a fair Little League player. He would graduate from Lubbock High School early, at age 16, and move to Georgia. But Davis said he always was very happy when the time came to go back home to Lubbock."
- William Kerns, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
It was a lifetime dream of mine to write a hit song because Buddy Holly had and, of course, Elvis Presley had been my hero and I remember I wrote a song, in fact, called 'Hooked on Music' that was a number one country song and the first verse told about hearing Elvis on the radio and it was all very true. It was written, you know, it was New Year's Eve, I was fourteen at the time and I was celebrating four A-M with them hoodlum friends of mine and I heard a boy named Elvis Presley singing 'That's All Right Mama' on the radio. And it turned me on and I've been hooked on music from that moment on. And that's basically true. And it's pretty amazing to me that some fourteen years later my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record. Well, 'Memories' was my first top ten record, but Elvis had cut some of my stuff for movies and a guy named Billy Strange, who used to work with Nancy Sinatra here in Los Angeles, used to come by my office. I worked for a publishing company over in Hollywood and he'd come by the office looking for material and we'd shoot the breeze and I'd play him songs that everybody else had written and then I'd play him some of my stuff, too. And eventually, he was scoring a movie for Elvis and they were looking for a song for it and I had a song I actually had written for Aretha Franklin and it was called 'A Little Less Conversation' but it fit right into the situation in the movie, you know. All Elvis' movies in those days was situation, you know. The situation led to the song and that's all the movies were written for the music, really. And the song fit in there so I just changed a couple of words around and that was my first record with him and it got in the top fifty or something, top forty. I'm not sure, but that was my breakthrough and after that they'd come to me once in a while for this or that. And I think he got the hungries again, wanted to peform again. And so they set up the big TV special in 68, I guess it was, and there was a chance for me to write one song for the section where Elvis sat in his black leather outfit and sang the old hits from the Sun days. They asked me to write a song bookending that, you know, about looking back over the years. And I sat up that night at Billy Strange's house and started writing about six o'clock in the evening and at eight oclock the next morning I had written 'Memories'. And we had to run down and do a demo on it that morning and present it to the powers that be and it turned out that they cut it and used it in the TV special and that became my first top ten record."
- Mac Davis, Elvis Australia : Official Elvis Presley Fan Club
'Poor Boy Boogie' - Mac Davis
Davis was born the exact same day as Motown artist Edwin Starr. He wrote a lot of songs covered by other artists and also co-wrote tunes too, for example, 'A Little Less Conversation' with Billy Strange of the Wrecking Crew. One of the internet's top memes has been a budget joke regarding Mac Davis and Burt Reynolds. It's said both men went up for some of the same roles in the late 1970s but box-office Burt proved to be stiff competition (he's currently filming 'The French Cowboy' with Bruce Davison and John Savage).
Burt Reynolds & Ariel Winter
Check out the online tributes to a great American artist this Sunday.
Happy Birthday, Mac Davis!
