Mac Davis
Morris Mac Davis, known as Mac Davis, is a country music singer and songwriter originally from Lubbock, Texas who has enjoyed much pop music crossover success. He became one of the most successful country singers of the 1970s and 1980s. He is also an actor.
Davis initially became famous as a songwriter and got his start as an employee of Nancy Sinatra’s company, Boots Enterprises, Inc. Davis was with Boots for several years in the late ’60s. During his time there, he played on many of Sinatra’s recordings and she put him in her stage shows. Boots Enterprises was also Davis’ publishing company, publishing songs such as “In the Ghetto”, “Friend, Lover, Woman, Wife”, “Home,” “It’s Such a Lonely Time of Year,” and “Memories”, which were recorded by Elvis Presley, Nancy Sinatra and others. Davis left Boots Enterprises, Inc. in 1970 to sign with Columbia Records, taking his songs with him.
He became known later also as a country singer. Especially during the 1970s, many of his songs scored successfully on the country and popular music charts, including “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me”, “One Hell of a Woman”, and “Stop and Smell the Roses”. During the 1970s, he also was active as an actor, hosting his own variety show and also acting in several movies.
Davis graduated at sixteen from Lubbock High School in Lubbock, Texas. He spent his childhood years with his sister Linda, living and working at the former College Courts, an efficiency apartment complex owned by his father, T.J. Davis, located at the intersection of College Avenue and 5th Street. Davis describes his father, who was divorced from Davis’ mother, as “very religious, very strict, very stubborn.” Though Davis was physically small, he had a penchant for getting into fistfights. “In those days, it was all about football, rodeo and fistfights. Oh, man, I got beat up so much while I was growing up in Lubbock,” Davis said in a March 2, 2008, interview with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper. “I was 5 feet, 9 inches, and weighed 125 pounds. I joined Golden Gloves but didn’t do good even in my division.” After he finished high school, Davis moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where his mother lived.