The optimistic Stop and Smell the Roses was another US Top 10 hit in 1974, and he also found success with One Hell of a Woman and Rock’n’Roll (I Gave You the Best Years of My Life). It spent three weeks at the top of the US charts. Photograph: GAB Archive/Redfernsĭavis became a performing artist in his own right, signing with Columbia Records in 1970 and scoring a hit two years later with the sly ballad Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me, about keeping a clingy girlfriend at arm’s length. After being asked by “a bunch of hippy types” to join a seance, Davis declined, telling them “I believe in music” and inspiring the song.ĭavis during his 1970s solo career. Davis said it was written on a guitar owned by Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb during a party at Gibb’s house. Other Elvis successes included Memories and Don’t Cry Daddy, the latter another US Top 10 hit.ĭavis songs of the period were also recorded by artists including Kenny Rogers, BJ Thomas, and Perry Como, one of many singers who cut versions of his song I Believe in Music – the best known is by soft rock band Gallery. Davis’s ballad In the Ghetto, an unusually socially conscious song for Presley, reached No 3 in the US and No 2 in the UK in 1969.

His biggest successes were songs for Elvis Presley in his brief late-1960s resurgence, following his peak rock’n’roll years in the 50s.Ī Little Less Conversation – written by Davis with Aretha Franklin in mind – was a minor hit in 1968, reaching No 69 in the US, but it became a global smash in 2002 when remixed by Junkie XL, reaching No 1 in the UK and numerous other countries. Born and raised in Lubbock, Texas, in 1942, Davis settled in Atlanta, Georgia, as a young man and began working as a songwriter signed to Nancy Sinatra’s Boots Enterprises.

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