Louis Davis, Jr. was born into a family of musicians in rural Ohio and
began his musical training at age 4, with his grandmother as his first
piano teacher. He composed his first piece, a four-part chorale about
his dog Stormy at age 6. By the time Davis entered the University of
Michigan music school, he had found his true musical loves the bassoon
and percussion. He graduated in 1969 as a classically trained
bassoonist who also played percussion in the famous University of
Michigan Marching Band. After touring with the renowned Norman Luboff
Choir, and teaching young people to love music, Davis took a new career
path that would change his life forever. He began writing advertising
jingles for an Omaha ad agency, including a series of spots about
fictional truck driver C.W. McCall and his waitress girlfriend Mavis at
the Old Home Filler Up and Keep On Truckin' Cafe. What began as just
another jingle for a bread company became a national phenomenon radio
listeners called stations to request the commercials be played as if
they were pop tunes, and the TV spots were listed in TV Guide. With
fellow ad executive Bill Fries, Davis accepted a recording contract,
and went on to produce blockbusters such as the 1975 hit "Convoy",
which sold more than a million copies within 2 months, and eventually
sold 10 million copies.
In the meantime, Davis explored new ways of expressing music and
discovered a style he calls "18th Century classical rock." He says "I
don't believe in all-acoustic or all-electronic, all-digital or
all-analog. My place is where they meet." He called his band Mannheim
Steamroller, which is the name of an 18th-Century musical technique
that we know today as the crescendo.
This exploration resulted in an album called Fresh Aire, which Davis
tried and failed to sell to mainstream record companies. So innovative
was this musical style that it did not fit into any of the standard
industry categories. Innovative music demanded innovative marketing, so
Davis founded his own record label, American Gramophone, and
distributed the albums not to record stores but to audio showrooms.
Used to demonstrate home stereo equipment, Fresh Aire became an
audiophile hit when listeners said "I like this turntable, but I really
want the music playing on it." Orders flooded in and records sold from
the U.S. to Japan to Germany. Since that time Davis has produced seven
more Fresh Aire albums, each inspired by the themes of nature, science
and ancient mythology. Fresh Aire VII was awarded the Grammy for Best
New Age Recording in 1990. Davis released the final album in the series
in August 2000, titled Fresh Aire 8, on the theme of infinity.
In 1984 Davis once again called conventional music industry wisdom into
question. He announced that his next project would be a Christmas album
and was told that he would certainly fail. Infusing new life into
traditional Christmas music "Mannheim Steamroller Christmas" has sold
more than six million copies and was nominated for a Grammy Award. With
subsequent albums "A Fresh Aire Christmas," "Christmas in the Aire" and
"Christmas Live", Mannheim Steamroller has sold more than 18 million
Christmas albums. Davis doesn't put much stock in conventional wisdom.
He and his wife Trisha live outside Omaha, Nebraska with their three
children, Kelly, Evan and Elyse. In the living room is the piano his
grandmother first taught him to play.
