Huge pillars of smoke were rising above the megaresort.ĭavis’ wife, a registered nurse, instinctively knew she was needed. “I had several people from my band, my road manager, my conductor, and a couple friends were staying there,” he said.ĭavis and his wife turned on their television. He was awakened by an early-morning telephone call from his Los Angeles-based assistant in Los Angeles.ĭavis and his wife, Lise, were staying in Engelbert Humperdinck’s villa on the Desert Inn property.ĭavis’ assistant said, “Look out your window and (you’ll) see the MGM on fire.' The night before the fire Davis and his musicians had opened his headliner engagement at the MGM Grand. “Probably one of the scariest days of my life,” he said. I approached him for his account of the MGM Grand fire on Nov.

I was working for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in November, 2012 when I met Davis at the Camelot gala at Opportunity Village. Reddy twice appeared on “The Mac Davis Show” on NBC, singing her cover of “I Believe in Music,” written and recorded by Davis. They were Las Vegas regulars in the 1970s, both headlining at the original MGM Grand hotel which had opened in 1973.īoth were so popular they had their own TV shows. Mac Davis and Helen Reddy had more in common than Davis’ signature song “I Believe in Music.” Mac Davis and his wife Elise in Las Vegas in 2012.

Mac davis music in my life