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SEARCHWhen Mac Davis wrote “Texas in My Rearview Mirror,” he made a promise. When he died in 2020, Lubbock held him to it. He came home. They buried him in his jeans, exactly as the song said they would. Davis was born in Lubbock, Texas, on January 21, 1942. He left after high school and spent decades writing hit songs in Los Angeles and performing on television in Nashville. But the song he called his favorite always told you where he was headed.
Davis grew up in Lubbock at his father’s apartment complex, College Courts. The complex sat at College Avenue and 5th Street in downtown Lubbock. His father bought him a guitar at nine. He sang in the church choir. As a kid, he saw Buddy Holly driving down the street with girls in his convertible. That was the moment, Davis said, he decided he wanted to be a singer. On June 3, 1955, he watched Elvis Presley shake the showroom of a local Pontiac dealership. Presley would later record seven of Davis’s compositions.
In the Ghetto and Other Gifts to Elvis
Davis graduated from Lubbock High School and moved to Atlanta, then Los Angeles. As a staff songwriter, he placed songs with Elvis, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, and Nancy Sinatra. Among the Elvis recordings was “In the Ghetto” (1969). That song reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Elvis’s first U.S. Top 10 hit in four years. Also recorded: “Don’t Cry Daddy,” “Memories,” and “A Little Less Conversation.” That last song became a posthumous global smash in 2002. A Junkie XL remix hit No. 1 in 26 countries. Lubbock inducted Davis into the West Texas Walk of Fame in 1983. He was the third inductee, after Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings.
Davis earned the ACM Entertainer of the Year award in 1974. He hosted his own NBC television variety show from 1974 to 1976. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1998. He entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006. The city honored him by renaming downtown 6th Street Mac Davis Lane in 2004. He died in Nashville on September 29, 2020. And then, as promised, he came home.
