Johnnie Davis
Johnnie " Scat " Davis ( Johnny " Scat " Davis, born May 11, 1910 in Brazil ( Clay County), Indiana as John Gustave Davis, † November 28, 1983 in Pecos ( Texas)) was an American trumpeter, scat singer and big-band leader in the swing and popular music as well as an actor.
Biography
Johnnie " Scat " Davis played as a child and as a young cornet in the Brazil Concert Band, which was led by his grandfather; he began his career, after he had played in various local ensembles, including the Jack O'Grady's Varsity Entertainers, in the early 1930s as a trumpeter and band vocalist with the orchestras of Jimmy Joy in Louisville and at Austin Wylie, where his childhood friend from Terre Haute, pianist Claude Thornhill played. Davis then moved to Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, with whom he first came to Hollywood. In 1933 he went to New York, where he played with his own trio and also at Red Nichols (1933 ), Will Osborne, Smith Ballew and Glen Gray.
He is best known now from 1937 through his involvement in several Hollywood films, most notably through the strip Hollywood hotel where Davis the title Horray for Hollywood sang the Johnny Mercer and Richard A. Whiting had written. Scat Davis played a total of 15 films; often - as in some early Ronald Reagan films like Brother Rat - in the role of the singing cowboys. In 1937 he participated in a film with Dick Powell in which he made an appearance as a comedian and singer. His film career ended in 1944 Knickerbocker Holiday. Song material from these strips with Scat Davis found in 1973 in Robert Altman's film adaptation of Chandler Death Goodbye use.
Back in the early 1930s he took some numbers with his own trio; 1935 to 1937 he led his own dance band. In the late 1930s he toured again on the west coast with its own big band, who also played in the 16 -year-old Buddy DeFranco, and had a successful engagement in the Blackhawk Restaurant in Chicago. The arrangements wrote his brother, trumpeter Art Davis.
In 1940, the fifteen- year-old Dodo Marmarosa began his career in Scat Davis band; 1943 accompanied his band the striptease dancer Ann Corio on a tour. Its the opinion of Leo Watson musically impressive band was short-lived ensemble, which Davis worked the mid-1940s, which among other the saxophonist Joe Reisman played. In 1946, she appeared in Memphis ( Tennessee) in the Claridge Hotel. Later Scat Davis was still working with smaller formations. He also took up some records for Decca.
1951/52, worked Scat Davis at the station WXYZ - TV in Detroit, where he appeared in a morning program with a trio or quartet, and on Friday night in the mission of Jazz Nocturne. He later moved to Texas, where he worked until the late 1960s with his own bands. Johnnie Davis died in a hunting trip of a heart attack.
Filmography (selection)
- Hollywood Hotel (1937 )
- Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938 )
- Brother Rat (1938 )
- A Child is Born (1939 )
- Sarong Girl ( 1943)
- Knickerbocker Holiday ( 1944)
Disco Graphical Notes
- Johnny " Scat " Davis (King, 1959)