Benny Davis (August 21, 1895 - December 20, 1979) was a
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic compositio ...
performer and writer of popular songs.
Biography
Davis started performing in vaudeville in his teens. He began writing songs when working as an accompanist for
Blossom Seeley
Blossom Seeley (July 16, 1886
— April 17, 1974)
. ''gabrielleray.150m.com''. Retrieved 2010-10-2 ...
. In 1917, he wrote "So Long Sammy" with
Jack Yellen and "Good-Bye Broadway. Hello France" with C. Francis Reisner.
His first success was 1920's "
Margie", with music by
Con Conrad and
J. Russel Robinson. His most popular song was "
Baby Face", written in 1926 with
Harry Akst. For
Broadway, Davis wrote the score for the 1927 edition of ''
Artists and Models'' and for the 1929 show ''Sons o' Guns''. His career lasted until the mid-1930s.
Davis's liberal use of
false rhymes in his songs was scorned by some pure practitioners of the craft, and prompted
Howard Dietz to compose a
couplet: "Heaven Save Us, From Benny Davis."
Nevertheless, Davis was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.
Davis died in December 1979, aged 84, in Miami, Florida.
References
External links
*
Benny Davis recordingsat the
Discography of American Historical Recordings.
*
1895 births
1979 deaths
Songwriters from New York (state)
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American composers
{{US-songwriter-stub