Mac Davis: Lubbock’s Songwriter for the Stars
January 21, 2027
Today is the birthday of Mac Davis. He would be 85 today.
Scott Davis was born in Lubbock, Texas on January 21, 1942, in the same flat, sun-hammered West Texas world that produced Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings. Unlike them, Davis didn’t stay in music’s underground. He went straight for the mainstream and hit it with surgical precision. He moved to Atlanta, then Los Angeles, working as a promotion man for Vee-Jay Records before anyone heard his songs. Then Elvis did.
Writing for the King
Elvis Presley recorded Davis’s “A Little Less Conversation” in 1968. Then “In the Ghetto” — a song about Chicago poverty that a Lubbock boy wrote — hit No. 3 on the pop charts in 1969. Then “Memories.” Davis became a television star with The Mac Davis Show through the 1970s and returned to country radio with his own hits for years after. He died on September 29, 2020. Explore his place items on Texas Music Map and more at the Texas State Historical Association.