Happy Labor Day everyone! We hope you’re getting your grill ready to enjoy some savory food and drinks with friends. In celebration of this respite from the toil of crafting and creating, we thought we’d share a funny story from the Mannheim Steamroller archives about Chip’s early career.
Chip did a stint with the Norman Luboff Choir before taking on a job as a jingle writer at the Omaha, NE ad agency Bozell & Jacobs. In 1974, Davis and fellow ad exec Bill Fries teamed up to create a fictional truck driver named “C.W. McCall” for a series of Clio Award-winning commercials for Old Home Bread. Davis was named SESAC Country Music Writer of the Year in 1976. The campaign proved so popular that Davis and Fries were soon producing recordings under the C.W. McCall name “Convoy” was a true blue phenomenon inspiring the 1978 Convoy with Kris Kristofferson.
After selling 10 million albums as C.W. McCall and being named Country Music Writer of the Year, Chip began getting interview requests – lots of them. So, he decided a little coaching was in order. Among the many valuable interview insights his (and Oprah’s) coach, Lillian Wilder, shared with Chip was the importance of wearing dark shirts.
“I had an interview coach years ago named Lillian Wilder she coached Oprah and a few people like that and she always told me to wear dark colors because my face would be brighter and you could read my lips better. She said a lot of people read lips on interviews as much as they actually hear it. Really that’s something I never heard before She was good I took lessons from her for 3 years, flew to New York she came out here a couple times to the farm to get ideas for questions she’d prep me for radio, TV, newspaper. She’d call me up at 4 o’clock in the morning and I’d just finished the show. You know you have a newspaper interviews at 6 o’clock ok what are your key issues. Now answer this question, answer this question, I’m like Lillian its 4 in the morning.”
