Hutch Davie


Robert Bunyan Davie III, professionally known as Hutch Davie, or Bob "Hutch" Davie, and sometimes credited as Bun Davie, Budd McCoy, Clint Harmon or Chuck Harmon, was an orchestra leader, arranger, pianist, and composer of popular music. He composed the song "Green Door", and led the orchestra which backed Jim Lowe on the best-selling version of the song in 1956.

Early life and education

Davie was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Bunyan Davie Jr. and Louise McCoy. He was a musical prodigy and taught himself to play the piano by the age of four. He had perfect pitch and expressed his distaste for music that was not in tune while still too young to articulate what was wrong with it. At the age of five he started attending the Birmingham Conservatory of Music. After high school, he attended Louisiana State University but refused to comply with a sports requirement and dropped out after a year.

Career

He moved to New York City and started working for NBC at the age of twenty. He married a model, Mary Elizabeth Pfaff, and entered the music business. His first big success was the song "Green Door" in 1956, which he arranged and on which he played piano. The record achieved BMI Million-air status. With record producer Bob Crewe, he also arranged Santo and Johnny's hit "Sleep Walk", and in 1958 had a #51 chart hit, as "Hutch Davie and his Honky Tonkers", with his version of Woody Herman's "Woodchopper's Ball". As a pianist he recorded jazz standards with his band the Honky Tonkers, and an album featuring his solo playing, Piano Memories, was issued in 1958.
He produced and arranged Linda Scott's three big hits on Canadian-American Records: "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star", "Don't Bet Money Honey", and "I Don't Know Why". He also produced and arranged the Angels' "'Til" and "Cry Baby Cry" and James Ray's "If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody" on Caprice Records, a subsidiary of Canadian-American.
As a songwriter, record producer and director of A&R, he also worked with such artists as Shirley Ellis, Patty Duke, Lesley Gore, Ellie Greenwich, and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. He was the arranger on the Bob Crewe Generation’s song "Music to Watch Girls By" in 1967, for which he was nominated for a Grammy. He also worked with Oliver on the songs "Good Morning Starshine" and "Jean", The Shirelles, and Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, among many others.
In 1974, he moved to Scotch Plains, New Jersey with his wife and son.
Davie died on April 7, 2020 in West Orange, New Jersey, at age 89.

Works

1956