FINAL NOTES
LOCAL 257 MEMBERS:
DON DAVIS
Please check to see that your
FUNERAL FUND BENEFICIARY is listed correctly, and up to date. We can't stress the importance of this enough. Your loved ones are counting on you. 22, 1928. As a child he heard a country band play and was entranced with the steel “Hawaiian” guitar. “It made my hair stand on end,” Davis said in a 2008 interview. “I realized, ‘I’ve got to do that.’” He found someone to give him lessons, and his parents bought him an electric Hawaiian guitar. “We’d just gotten electricity. There was an electric cord on the porch…I’d unplug that cord and plug in my amplifier. The cows would come and hear the racket. They kind of liked it,” Davis said. Davis played local dances and worked in the Mobile shipyards as a teenager until moving to Nashville. Davis was only 15 when he joined the Grand Ole Opry as a member of Pee Wee King’s band. At the time, he was the youngest to have become an Opry staff musician. After service in the U.S. Army, Davis continued his career, working at the Opry, and also touring and recording with Hank Williams Sr., George Morgan, Cowboy Copas, Tex Ritter, Minnie Pearl, and many others. During one of his tours he met the Carter family member Anita Carter, who he would go on to marry. Davis partnered with Shot Jackson and Hank Garland in 1955 to design and build ten custom pedal steel guitars, some of the first made. He would later become a spokesperson for Fender’s line of steel guitars. In 1958 Davis moved to Mobile, where he hosted WKRG’s long-running live television
show, Alabama Jubilee, but in 1963 he returned to Nashville, where he opened a publishing company and began to produce for artists like Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell, Kitty Wells, and others. By the early ‘70s Davis was managing a publishing company for Harlan Howard. He had produced three records with Johnny Cash, and had developed a knack for finding songs. Davis brought Cash one of his biggest hits, “A Boy Named Sue,” as well as “Jackson” and “One Piece at a Time.” In the early ‘80s Davis became operations manager for Waylon Jennings. After retirement he returned to Alabama, where he married Serilda Dickson of Portland, Tenn. In 1997 Davis was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. In 2012 Davis published a book on his career and experiences — Nashville Steeler: My Life in Country Music. Davis was preceded in death by his parents; Oliver Harold and Anna Belle Patrick Davis; his stepfather, J.C. Beard; the mother of his two children, Anita Carter; and two stepsons, Mike and Chris Flanigan. Survivors include his wife, one daughter, Lorrie Davis Bennett; one son, John Christopher “Jay” Davis; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Funeral services were held March 12 at Forest Lawn Funeral Home in Saraland, Ala. Burial and Masonic graveside services were at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens. continued on page 32
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