Bill Hayes (I had that 78 as a child)
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All on Fri Jan 26 09:19:22 2024
Bill Hayes, Enduring Soap Star With a ‘Davy Crockett’ Hit, Is Dead at 98
Bill Hayes, an actor and singer whose 2,141 episodes of “Days of Our
Lives” over five and a half decades constituted the daytime drama
version of an ultramarathon, and whose top-selling 1955 single, “The
Ballad of Davy Crockett,” remains seared into the memories of the baby
boom generation, died on Jan. 12 at his home in Studio City, Calif. He
was 98.
His wife and longtime co-star, Susan Seaforth Hayes, confirmed his death.
To soap opera fans, Mr. Hayes was a staple of weekday afternoons from
the days of rabbit-ear antennas into the streaming era.
He began his tenure on the long-running NBC show in 1970. His character,
Doug Williams, was a suave and slippery con artist who, after leaving
prison, found himself padding through the maze of the plot twists, double-crosses and big reveals that day after day drew viewers back to
the fictional Midwestern town of Salem.
.......................
William Foster Hayes III was born on June 5, 1925, in Harvey, Ill., near Chicago. He was the second of three sons of Betty (Mitchell) Hayes, a schoolteacher, and William Foster Hayes II, an executive at World Book,
the encyclopedia company.
Growing up listening to his father sing baritone with a vocal quartet,
Bill aspired to be a singer himself.
After graduating from Thornton Township High School in 1942, he enrolled
at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Ind. With World War II raging, he enlisted in the Navy and trained as a fighter pilot, although the war
ended before he could be called for active duty.
He returned to DePauw and graduated with a liberal arts degree in 1947.
He later earned a master’s degree in music from Northwestern University.
Turning his sights to show business, Mr. Hayes made his mark onstage in
a national tour of the musical “Carousel” and on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Me and Juliet,” among other productions. In
1949, he made his debut on television, then in its infancy, as a singer
on “Fireball Fun for All,” an NBC variety show hosted by the longtime vaudeville act Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson.
In the early 1950s, Mr. Hayes was seen on “Your Show of Shows,” the
variety show featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.
But it was a television program that he did not appear on that provided
him the opportunity for a hit record. In 1954, Disney sparked a youth
craze with its “Davy Crockett” serial, with the TV frontiersman’s trademark coonskin cap becoming a must-have for children.
The success of the TV serial “Davy Crockett” spurred a craze for
coonskin caps — and a song that, as recorded by Mr. Hayes, became the best-selling single in the country.
After seeing the show, the record producer Archie Bleyer decided that
its theme song, sung by a vocal group, had potential as a stand-alone
single for a solo performer.
“He called me up and said come by, I have a song,” Mr. Hayes recounted
in “World by the Tail: The Bill Hayes Story,” a 2017 documentary about
his life that he produced with his grandson Dave Samuel. “We met that
night at 10 o’clock in an RCA recording studio, we did one take — one track, one take. It was a hit record.”
The song became the best-selling single in the country for five weeks,
starting in March 1955. Davymania apparently knew no bounds: The show’s
star, Fess Parker, and the singer Tennessee Ernie Ford would both score
hit singles with interpretations of their own.
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