- Governor of State of Louisiana, 1944-1948.
- Wrote and popularized the song "You Are My Sunshine".
- Father of Jimmie Davis Jr..
- Davis was born to a sharecropping couple, the former Sarah Elizabeth Works (1877-1965) and Samuel Jones Davis (1873-1945), in Beech Springs, southeast of Quitman in Jackson Parish, north Louisiana. It is now a ghost town.
- Elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1972.
- Inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
- Davis was elected for two nonconsecutive terms from 1944 to 1948 and from 1960 to 1964 as the governor of his native Louisiana.
- As Governor, Davis was an opponent of efforts to desegregate Louisiana.
- The birth date listed on his Country Music Hall of Fame plaque is September 11, 1902. The 1900 US Census recorded his birth as September 1899, which his parents would have told the census taker.
- The family was so poor that young Jimmie did not have a bed in which to sleep until he was nine years old.
- At the time of his death in 2000, he was the oldest living former governor as well as the last living governor to have been born in the 19th century.
- He was an American politician, singer and songwriter of both sacred and popular songs.
- Davis was a nationally popular country music and gospel singer from the 1930s into the 1960s, occasionally recording and performing as late as the early 1990s.
- Davis was not sure of his date of birth; according to The New York Times, "Various newspaper and magazine articles over the last 70 years said he was born in 1899, 1901, 1902 or 1903. He told The New York Times several years ago that his sharecropper parents could never recall just when he was born - he was, after all, one of 11 children - and that he had not had the slightest idea when it really was.
- He was inducted into six halls of fame, including the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Southern Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame, and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
- Davis was also a close acquaintance of the country singer-songwriter Hank Williams, with whom he co-wrote the top-10 hit "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle" in 1951, supposedly on a fishing day they spent together.
- Davis often performed during his campaign stops when running for governor of Louisiana.
- During his first run for governor, opponents reprinted the lyrics of some of these songs in order to undermine Davis's campaign. In one case, anti-Davis forces played some records over an outdoor sound system, only to give up after the crowds started dancing, ignoring the double-entendre lyrics. Until the end of his life, Davis never denied or repudiated those records.
- During the late 1920s, Davis taught history (and, unofficially, yodeling) for a year at the former Dodd College for Girls in Shreveport. The college president, Monroe E. Dodd, who was also the pastor of First Baptist Church of Shreveport and a radio preacher, invited Davis to serve on the faculty.
- Members of Davis's last band included Allen "Puddler" Harris of Lake Charles. He had served as pianist for singer Ricky Nelson early in his career.
- Davis graduated from Beech Springs High School and from Soule Business College, in New Orleans.
- Davis received his bachelor's degree in history from the Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville in Rapides Parish.
- A long-time Southern Baptist, Davis recorded a number of Southern gospel albums. In 1967 he served as president of the Gospel Music Association.
- Davis became a commercially successful singer of rural music before he entered politics.
- A number of his songs were used as part of motion picture soundtracks.
- In 1999, "You Are My Sunshine" was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, and the Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the Songs of the Century. "You Are My Sunshine" was ranked in 2003 as No. 73 on CMT's 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.
- He received a master's degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
- While governor, he had a No. 1 hit single in 1945 with "There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder".
- Virginia Shehee, a Shreveport businesswoman, philanthropist, and state senator, introduced legislation to designate "You Are My Sunshine" as the official state song. The song was reportedly written for Elizabeth Selby, a resident of Urbana, Illinois and housemother of Wescoga ("Wesley Co-Op for Gals") at the time the song was written. Until his death, Davis insisted that he wrote the song.
- After being elected in 1944, he became known as the "singing governor.".
- Davis recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and Decca Records for decades and released more than 40 albums.
- Davis was also known for recording energetic and raunchy blues tunes, such as "Red Nightgown Blues" and "Tom Cat and Pussy Blues". Some of these records included slide guitar accompaniment by black bluesman Oscar "Buddy" Woods.
- Davis appeared in half a dozen films, including one starring Ozzie and Harriet, who had a TV series under their names.
- His early work was in the style of country music singer Jimmie Rodgers.
- During his second term, Davis built the Sunshine Bridge, the new Louisiana Governor's Mansion, and Toledo Bend Reservoir, all criticized at the time, but later recognized as beneficial to the state. Davis coordinated the pay periods of state employees, who had sometimes received their checks a week late, a particular hardship to those with low earnings.
- He offered tacit support to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, national Democrats, to secure the state's hold of pending offshore oil revenues. In the 1963 legislative fiscal session, he defeated efforts to procure an unpledged presidential elector slate for the 1964 general election, by which time he had been succeeded by John J. McKeithen.
- Davis established a State Retirement System and funding of more than $100 million in public improvements, while leaving the state with a $38 million surplus after his first term.
- Davis believed that his singing career enhanced his political prospects. He once told Georgia Republican Ronnie Thompson, a mayor of Macon and fellow musician: "If you want to have any success in politics, sing softly and carry a big guitar," a play on an old Theodore Roosevelt adage.
- Toward the end of his life, longtime Democrat Davis endorsed at least two Republican candidates after the state's voters had gone through a political realignment. In 1996 Davis endorsed Republican state representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Mary Landrieu of New Orleans, and Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster Jr. seeking re-election in 1999. His opponent was African-American Democratic Congressman Bill Jefferson of New Orleans.
- The Jimmie Davis Bridge over the Red River connects Shreveport and Bossier City via Louisiana Highway 511. It was named in his honor during his second term as governor.
- Davis was posthumously inducted into the Delta Music Museum Hall of Fame in Ferriday, Louisiana.
- The 2006 recipient of the "Friends of Jimmie Davis" award was the late former State Senator B. G. Dyess, a Baptist minister from Rapides Parish.
- The Davis archives of papers and photographs is housed in the "You Are My Sunshine" Collection of the Linus A. Sims Memorial Library at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.
- He was a close friend of the North Dakota-born band leader Lawrence Welk, who frequently reminded viewers of his television program of his association with Davis.
- Davis's first wife, the former Alvern Adams, the daughter of a physician in Shreveport, was the first lady while he was governor during both terms. Two years after her death in 1967, Davis married Anna Gordon, born Effie Juanita Carter (February 15, 1917 - March 5, 2004). A founding member of the gospel quartet The Chuck Wagon Gang along with her father, a sister and a brother, she had been given the stage name "Anna" during the mid-1930s. Davis was a longtime fan of the group, who were gospel music pioneers with more than 36 million records sold in forty years of affiliation with Columbia Records.
- Out of office, Davis resided primarily in Baton Rouge but made numerous singing appearances, particularly in churches throughout the United States.
- Jimmie Davis State Park is located on Caney Lake (not to be confused with Caney Lakes Recreation Area near Minden) southwest of Chatham.
- In 1993, Davis was among the first thirteen inductees of the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
- The Jimmie Davis Tabernacle is located near Weston in Jackson Parish. The tabernacle hosts occasional gospel singing. At the site is a replica of the Davis homestead (c. 1900) and of the Peckerwood Hill Store, an old general store that served the community.
- In 1971, Davis entered another crowded Democratic gubernatorial primary field with new political prospects, but he finished in fourth place with 138,756 ballots (11.8 percent).
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