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SEARCHTwo streets in Lubbock carry the names of musicians. One is Buddy Holly Avenue. The other is Mac Davis Lane. The city council renamed downtown 6th Street on July 31, 2004. The street runs from Texas Avenue to University Avenue, cutting through the heart of downtown Lubbock. One block south sits College Avenue and 5th Street. That corner held his father’s apartment complex, College Courts. That was Mac Davis’s first world.
Mac Davis grew up in those downtown blocks in the 1940s and 1950s. His father bought him a guitar at nine. He sang in the church choir. He saw Buddy Holly driving past with a convertible full of girls. He watched Elvis shake the showroom of a nearby Pontiac dealership on June 3, 1955. Lubbock gave him what he needed to become one of the most successful songwriters in American music. He left after graduating from Lubbock High School. He did not stay gone.
The Street With His Name
Davis wrote seven songs that Elvis Presley recorded, including “In the Ghetto” and “A Little Less Conversation.” He had his own NBC television variety show from 1974 to 1976. He earned the ACM Entertainer of the Year award in 1974. Lubbock inducted him into the West Texas Walk of Fame in 1983. He was the third inductee, after Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings. Davis’s song “Texas in My Rearview Mirror” tells the story of leaving Lubbock and regretting it. The final verse turns the hook: “Now happiness was Lubbock, Texas, growing nearer and nearer.” And then: “When I die you can bury me in Lubbock, Texas, in my jeans.” He died on September 29, 2020. They brought him home. They buried him in his jeans. Mac Davis Lane runs through the city where that promise was made.
