Audrey "Art" Davis (May 31, 1913 – January 16, 1987) was an American musician, singer and actor.

Biography

Davis was born in

Paradise, Texas Paradise is a city in Wise County, Texas, United States. The population was 475 in 2020. According to tradition, the area was a cowboy's "paradise", hence the name. In 1985, Blue Bell Ice Cream filmed a television commercial in Paradise, TX. T ...

, United States. His family moved to

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

when he was two and then back to Texas to the town of Lewisville. His father was a musician, and by the age of seven, Davis was an accomplished

fiddler A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Although in many ...

. His parents divorced and his mother moved the family to

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

where Davis enrolled in high school. He played

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

and was in the school band playing

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

. He served in the

112th Cavalry Regiment The 112th Cavalry Regiment is a Texas National Guard regiment that served in several Pacific campaigns during World War II. Early history The 112th Cavalry was first organized in 1918 as the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment before being disbanded in ...

of the

Texas National Guard The Texas Military Forces (TXMF) are the principal instrument through which the Texas Military Department (TMD) executes security policy for Texas, which has the second-largest population and border in the United States, and the 9th-largest econ ...

where he gained riding experience His first band was called The Rhythm Aces and they worked with many

Western Swing Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the Western United States, West and Southern United States, South among the region's Western music (North America), Western string bands. It is dan ...

bands such as Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, the Light Crust Doughboys, and Bill Boyd's Cowboy Ramblers. In 1934, Davis was recording with the Cowboy Ramblers for Bluebird Records. He added the

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

to his repertoire of instruments that he played. He became a staff musician at WRR Radio in Dallas and met

Gene Autry Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning s ...

who was looking for a backup fiddler for a recording session. He recorded with Autry on September 22, 1935 for

American Record Corporation American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company. Overview ARC was created in January 1929 by Louis G. Sylvester, president of Scran ...

. Autry offered Davis work in Autry's movies and on road tours. He worked with Autry for three years and then moved to Equity Pictures to work on ''Adventures of the Masked Phantom'' (1939) under the name Larry Mason. His next movie was '' The Texas Marshal'' (1941) with Tim McCoy. He then appeared in six serial films in 1941 and 1942 with Lee Powell and his singing buddy Bill Boyd. Davis served in the United States Navy in World War II. His last time on film was a short musical ''A Cowboy's Holiday'' (1949). Davis continued to make a living with music into the 1980s. He died in January 1987, at the age of 73 in Bloomburg, Texas.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Art 1913 births 1987 deaths American male film actors People from Wise County, Texas 20th-century American singers 20th-century American male actors 20th-century American male singers