Gail Davies

Born to country singer Tex Dickerson as Patricia Gail Dickerson, Gail Davies ranks among the genre’s most pivotal female figures. As one of the earliest women to helm production on her own recordings, she provided a formative model for later country artists including Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss, and Pam Tillis. Beyond performing her own successes such as “Grandma’s Song” and “Someone Is Looking for Someone Like You,” she supplied chart material to the Whites, Jann Browne, and Wild Rose, while her compositions reached additional audiences through versions by Susan McCann, Mari Nagatomi, George Hamilton IV, and Nana Mouskori.

She entered the world in Broken Bow, Oklahoma’s McCurtain County, yet spent her childhood in Washington state after her mother’s remarriage. Following high-school graduation she headed to Los Angeles, where she wed a jazz musician; although she explored that idiom briefly, she recommitted to country music once the marriage ended.

While serving as a session vocalist for A&M, Davies contributed to dates with Neil Young, Hoyt Axton, and Tom Pacheco. Joni Mitchell befriended her, and Mitchell’s engineer Henry Lewy instructed her in record production. Though Frank Zappa extended an invitation to tour Europe, she opted instead to collaborate with the incisive country stylist Roger Miller.

Her older brother Ron Davies, whose composition “It Ain’t Easy” was interpreted by David Bowie and Three Dog Night, prompted her to purchase a guitar and begin songwriting. After securing a contract with EMI Publishing, she relocated to Nashville; one early result, “Bucket to the South,” became a hit for Ava Barber and was subsequently cut by Lynn Anderson and Mitzi Gaynor.

Intent on establishing herself as a recording artist, Davies signed with CBS/Lifesong in 1978. Her self-titled debut yielded two charting singles: “No Love Here I” peaked at number twenty-six on Billboard, while “Someone Is Looking for Someone Like You” approached the Top Ten and appeared in seven translated versions.

She produced her own follow-up, The Game, in 1979, extending her distinctive viewpoint within country music. The 1982 album Giving Herself Away featured the K.T. Oslin-penned single “‘Round the Clock Lovin’,” which climbed to number nine. That same year she gave birth to son Christopher Scruggs—offspring of Gary Scruggs and grandson of bluegrass banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs—while also issuing the second album of 1982, What Can I Say.

Her fifth collection, Where Is a Woman to Go, appeared in 1984 under the production of James Taylor’s bassist Leland Sklar and closed with a reading of John Prine and Bobby Braddock’s “Unwed Fathers,” supported by harmony vocals from Dolly Parton.

At London’s Wembley Festival in 1985, British singer Hank Wangford encouraged Davies to assemble her own country-rock ensemble, Wild Choir.