Mars in 2012 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. He also wrote “Young Girls” with the pop star Bruno Mars a version released by Mr. He made his acting debut in the 1979 movie “North Dallas Forty,” a comedy that starred Nick Nolte as an aging football star and Mr. Davis had his own television variety hour, “The Mac Davis Show,” from 1974 to 1976 on NBC and was a regular guest on “The Tonight Show” and other talk shows in those years. “Of course, I was just a kid, you know,” Mr.

Davis said in an interview with the website Elvis Australia about the first time he saw Presley perform onstage, in a parking lot at the county fairgrounds in Lubbock. “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.

Mac davis music