SHREVEPORT – Louisiana historian and author Robert Mann launched into his biography on two-time governor Jimmie Davis expecting to find that Davis rode his musical popularity to a political career.
What Mann discovered in the writing of “You Are My Sunshine: Jimmy Davis and the Biography of a Song” was that Davis’ political career contributed heavily to his musical success.
“The book started out as a Louisiana politician who in my mind used his music, which started right here in Shreveport as his first recording was made in 1929 at KWKH studios, as a stepping stone into politics,” Mann said. “But the research really turned all that around.
“Now I’m finding that this is a guy who used politics as a way to support his music habit. He was really more of a musician and a maker of music and a singer than he was a politician.”
But it’s not in the way one would think, Davis told an audience Wednesday at the LSUS Noel Memorial Library as part of his book tour.
Not long after Davis first came to Shreveport as a history teacher at Dodd College for Girls, he started wading into Shreveport public life as a criminal court clerk.
Davis was already at the pinnacle of a forerunner of the country music genre (called hillbilly music) when he became Shreveport’s public safety commissioner in 1938. Collier’s Magazine wrote an article that year about this “growing phenomenon of hillbilly music” in which Davis was the first name mentioned in terms of the genre’s stars.
While Davis’ singing and songwriting ability were unquestioned, Mann explained part of his rise can be attributed to keeping his band together.
“When Jimmie Davis was serving in office starting in the 1930s through 1943, he always had a band,” Mann said. “There wasn’t a lot of money in country music in those days, even for a star like Davis.
“Most couldn’t afford to pay a band. So the way he did it was all of his band members became police officers when he was elected in 1938. Public service was a way to keep the band together so that they were polished, they knew his songs, and they were available to play with him locally and in places like Dallas, New Orleans, Memphis, and Charlotte when he would record.”
Mann added that he met the son of one of Davis’ trumpet players recently, and the son always wondered why his dad was a police officer in addition to his music career.
Then came “You Are My Sunshine,” a song that was named the No. 73 song of all-time in Country Music Television’s 100 Greatest Songs of Country Music.
Davis popularized the song that shot the tune to international fame, but he didn’t write it.
He’s claimed authorship or co-authorship in several different accounts throughout his life, but he wasn’t even the first to record it.
Mann’s research confirms the likely author is Georgia native Oliver Hood.
The Pine Ridge Boys and the Rice Brothers recorded versions of the song before Davis.
The Rice Brothers came to Shreveport and played with Davis, who bought the rights to the song with steel guitarist Charlie Mitchell from Paul Rice for $35 to help cover his wife’s medical bills.
Davis was the first to copyright the song, and his New York recording in 1940 is the one that popularized the tune.
Both Davis and the song appeared in multiple movies in the 1940s, and Davis played the song at political rallies in his successful bid for governor in 1944.
“In Louisiana at that time, there was a lot of people who were still either pro-Huey Long or anti-Long after his assassination in 1935,” Mann said. “Davis was an acceptable figure to both camps, and he actually ran on ‘peace and harmony’ both in government and with his music.
“He would only talk for maybe 10 minutes at his political rallies. The rest of the time, he and his band played music.”
A much younger Davis entered the musical scene as a risqué blues artist, shifted to Hillbilly music and then transformed himself into a Gospel music star by the 1950s.
A pro-segregation Davis won a second term as governor in 1960.
Mann’s book details the rise of Davis as a musician and politician, the famous song he helped popularize but didn’t write, and the ability to have a lasting musical career that spanned seven decades.
“What the book really became about was the birth of country music,” Mann said. “Doing this research, I realized that Jimmie Davis was one of the founding fathers of country music as he traveled around the region in the 1920s and 1930s and was part of its international appeal in the 1940s.
“Davis was the 20th person that was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and I assumed it was because he was a one-hit wonder with ‘Sunshine.’ But he was much more than that.”
Mann included the Noel Memorial Library on his book tour in part because it houses the Northwest Louisiana Archives, which he used extensively for research about Davis’ music career and time in Shreveport.
“This is to me is what a university library ought to be like,” Mann said. “I want to thank Laura McLemore (head archivist at the Archives) and Brian Sherman (library dean) and all their staff for everything they did to assist me when I was researching this book.
“I’m already digging in the Archives for another book that I’m working on.”
