Mac Davis has had a varied and rich career as a songwriter, singer, actor and television variety host. His career is usually traced from his working with Nancy Sinatra starting in 1970. Long before that, in 1962, when Mac Davis was still a 20-year-old living with his mother in Atlanta, he recorded “I’m a Poor Loser” and “Let Him Try” among a number of sides that included the schoolroom novelty, “The Phantom Strikes Again.” Born in Lubbock, Texas, Davis lived with his father as a teenager when his parents were divorced. A difficult experience, Mac described it as being caught between the strict religious expectations of his father and his tendency to get in fights with fellow students. After high school, he moved to Atlanta to be with his mother. There he hooked up with the noted music publisher Bill Lowry, who signed and recorded Mac Davis and passed his contract on to Jamie Records.
Despite being a skinny kid weighing 125 and 5 and a half feet tall, he found himself ready to take on all comers, and his combative spirit was reflected in the two songs in his Jamie release, “I’m a Poor Loser” and “Let Him Try.” From Atlanta he moved to California, where he signed with Nancy Sinatra before the flowering of his career with Columbia Records. Hits there included "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me" (No. 1), "One Hell of a Woman" (No. 11), and "Stop and Smell the Roses" (No. 9). He also wrote Elvis Presley’s hit “In the Ghetto,” which he originally presented to Sammy Davis, Jr.
