Originally from North Carolina, Jeff Davis' family moved around. They lived in places all over the state of Texas and, for a year, Glendale, California. In his early teens, his mother split from her husband and they headed back to North Carolina. As the eldest of five, Jeff worked in his grandfather's tobacco fields and worked at a grocery store to help his mother, financially. Jeff worked as the school artist at Clayton High School and was one of Ten Outstanding Students at the school. With a small scholarship and borrowed money, Jeff headed to Virginia Commonwealth University to study art inside a major of Communication Arts & Design. "I was going to New York, I thought, to do design work for Macy's or Gimbles Department stores but fate had something else in mind."
As the news director of the college station and an air personality, he fell in love with broadcasting. Out of school, he decided to try Radio and was hired by Gary Mitchell at WABB in Mobile. This led to work in Washington, DC, Newport-News and ultimately, legendary radio station WLS in Chicago, where he had an audience of around 8 million listeners in 38 states. It was at WLS he first heard a local band, Styx, and he featured their song, "Lady" on his show. This brought them national attention and eased them into a new recording contract with A&M Records. Tommy Shaw and JY are among Jeff's longtime friends.
Aside from extensive air work, it was at WLS that he honed his skills in commercial and imaging production. He also hosted national shows with major artists such as Duran Duran and regular interviews of music celebrities for Musicpeople and his national show on the ABC Rock Network, "America's Music Voteline."
But there was a need for new challenges. He moved to Los Angeles for acting work in the movie industry (seven films to his credit) and continued production work for several L.A. radio stations, including KNX FM (CBS) and KRTH FM (RKO, at the time).
He had cultivated a number of outside clients such as Westwood One and another national show he hosted, "On The Radio," which aired in 85 cities in the U.S. and several international markets. He hosted the live broadcast in Los Angeles with his old pals, Chicago, when they released their "Big Band" album. Jeff was known as a reliable host for live shows and he hosted the national Grammy announcement with Olivia Newton-John (whom he had interviewed at WLS) and Quincy Jones. He later did the live radio version of the Grammy Awards, interviewing a Who's Who of superstars.
All of his efforts outside of working for a radio station led him to create Jeff Davis Productions, Inc,, a commercial production company serving a wide variety of audio projects for Radio-TV and commercial clients in virtually every sector of business.
