Meyer Davis (9 January 1892 – 6 April 1976) was a society

musician A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...

in the 1920s to 1960s who at the height of his career owned and operated over 80 bands with more than 1,000 musicians playing for him.

Early life

Davis was born in

Ellicott City, Maryland Ellicott City is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place in, and the county seat of, Howard County, Maryland, Howard County, Maryland, United States. Part of the Baltimore metropolitan area, its ...

, to Solomon David and Rose Benjamin. His parents were of Russian Jewish ancestry from what is today

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

and

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

. Davis, who began taking violin lessons as a child, began his musical career while a law student. From 1917 to 1930, Davis became the manager of the

Chevy Chase Lake Chevy Chase Lake was a trolley park in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, that operated from 1894 until about 1936. It was created by the Chevy Chase Land Company, which sought to draw residents of Washington, D.C., to its nascent suburb of C ...

resort providing dance orchestras that appeared regularly through the vacation season.

Career

In 1915, Davis founded his first band, which was eventually named the Meyer Davis Orchestra. Davis became a major player in the society music scene in the East Coast of the United States in the 1950s and 60s. He played a wide range of events from balls to presidential galas and inaugurations for presidents including

Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, Ford assumed the p ...

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...

and

Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

. Davis died in 1976 at his home in

101 Central Park West 101 Central Park West is a residential building on Central Park West, between 70th and 71st Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The apartment building was constructed in 1929 in the Neo-Renaissance style by architects ...

in New York City. The archive of his career is now held at the University of Maine's Fogler Library.

Family

Davis married composer and musician Hilda Emery, who also played piano in his band. The couple's oldest child, Virginia, was a noted

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...

and performed across the United States. Davis's second son

Garry Davis Sol Gareth "Garry" Davis (27 July 1921 – 24 July 2013) was an international peace activist best known for Relinquishment of United States nationality, renouncing his American citizenship and interrupting the United Nations in 1948 to advocat ...

was a controversial international peace activist. Davis's youngest son Emery Davis (1923–2018) took over his band after his retirement and continued operating as an accomplished musician in his own right into the 1990s.

References

{{Authority control 1892 births 1976 deaths 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century jazz composers American male conductors (music) American jazz bandleaders American jazz composers American big band bandleaders American male jazz composers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians