“He was like nothing I’d ever seen before,” Mr. Davis recorded many of these originals himself, working in a Southern pop vein akin to that of Presley, whom he often cited, and his fellow Lubbock, Texas, native Buddy Holly, whom he called his greatest musical influence. Singing in a warm, resonant baritone, Mr. “Watching Scotty Grow,” another of his best-known compositions, stalled just outside the pop Top 10 for Bobby Goldsboro in 1971. Davis’s signature song he closed his concerts with it for decades.
“I Believe in Music” was recorded by scores of artists and became Mr.
