Mac Davis, Texan songwriter who with Billy Strange gave Elvis Presley several hit records – obituary

• Mac Davis, who has died aged 78, was a singer, actor and entertainer, at the peak of his success in the United States as a country and pop performer in the mid-1970s; but his work was perhaps most widely known through songs he wrote for others, notably hits for Elvis Presley such as In the Ghetto and A Little Less Conversation. Davis was inspired to become a musician by the example of a boy a few years above him at Lubbock High School in Texas: “Buddy [Holly] was on the radio,” he recalled, “but we thought they just played him on the Lubbock stations. Then I saw him drive down College Avenue in a new, black and pink Pontiac Catalina convertible. New glasses. New teeth. And girls in the car. And I said if Buddy can do it, so can I.” By the late Sixties, Davis was working at Nancy Sinatra’s Boots Enterprises, appearing on her records and penning songs for the likes of Perry Como, B J Thomas, Kenny Rogers and Louis Jordan. Versatility, as well as an unaffected straightforwardness, was to become one of the hallmarks of his music.