Bill Hayes
Actor and singer whose Ballad of Davy Crockett helped spark a schoolboy craze for raccoon hats
BILL HAYES, who has died aged 98, was an actor best known in the US for his 52-year stint, on and off, as convicted con artist-turned-lounge singer Doug Williams on the long-running NBC soap Days of Our Lives; in Britain he was best known as the singer of The Ballad of Davy Crockett, the theme song of the Walt Disney TV show Davy Crockett (1954) screened by ITV, episodes of which were edited into two films, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955) and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956).
The series starred Fess Parker as the legendary frontiersman who helped to conquer America’s untamed West, and sparked a schoolboy craze for coonskin hats with bushy tails and replica Crockett flintlock cap-firing pistols. The price of raccoon fur rocketed and Davy Crockett appeared on everything from bubblegum cards to soap figurines,
Hayes’s recording of its singalong theme The Ballad of Davy Crockett (by George Bruns with lyrics by Thomas W Blackburn) topped the US Billboard charts for five weeks in 1955 and reached the No 2 slot in the UK in early 1956. The words – “Born on a mountain top in Tennessee/ Greenest state in the land of the free/ Raised in the woods so he knew ev’ry tree/ Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three/ Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!” became familiar in playgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic.
But the world was moving on. Marc Bolan once recalled that his first experience of rock’n’roll came “after I heard Ballad of Davy Crockett by Bill Hayes. My Dad went out to buy that record but instead bought one by Bill Haley. I was so disappointed – until I heard the record. Then I threw Bill Hayes out of the window and rocked.”
William Foster Hayes was born on June 5 1925, in Harvey, Illinois, the son of an encyclopaedia salesman. In 1943 he enlisted in the Navy Air Corps and trained as a fighter pilot but did not see active service before the war ended. After graduating from Depauw University in music and English, he embarked on a master’s degree at Northwestern University.
He was bitten by the acting bug after taking the place of his younger brother, who had a throat infection, at an audition for a role in the touring production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s
Carousel. He won the job, which paid $70 a week for four months.
Then in mid-1949 he landed a singing and acting role on Broadway in Funzapoppin, the Ole Olsen-chic Johnson comedy revue. When Olsen and Johnson went on to head a live variety show at NBC, they took Hayes with them.
That led to a five-year stint as a regular on Sid Caesar’s live TV variety show Your Show of Shows. After the success of The Ballad of Davy Crockett, Hayes toured the US with the national production of Bye Bye Birdie and in a night club act, the Singing Sweethearts, with Florence Henderson.
He joined Days of Our Lives in February 1970 shortly after the end of his first marriage to Mary Hobbs, and soon fell in love with Susan Seaforth, the actress who portrayed the spoiled heiress Julie Olsen Williams. At the time Hayes had custody of three of the five children from his first marriage – and as Susan Seaforth Hayes (as she became) later recalled, “Bill’s house was like a zoo. He didn’t have a nickel, and the kids were out of control, living on pizza... I thought he needed help.” They married in 1974, two years before their screen characters. Hayes was twice nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role.
His wife survives him with his children from his first marriage.