About Raymond Davis

As the oldest member of Late Show, tenor Raymond Davis (or Old Man Raymond as we love to call him) brings over 30 years of quartetting experience to the quartet.

Although he was dreaming of the day he could sing in a quartet when he was about 5 years old, he joined the BHS (way back in the days when it was still known as SPEBSQSA) in 1973 at the ripe young age of 12. After that, the floodgates of barbershop were opened for Raymond and he sang in a lot of quartets where he lived in the San Diego, California area.

His dad's quartets The Odds N Ends and The 4 City 4 had a major influence on Raymond's singing and really paved the way for his future quartets. Two of his early quartets On Location and The Quackenbush Quartet made it to the district level of competition in the mid 80's.

In 1988, he got into a quartet called Special Feature that changed his barbershop career forever. Let's put it this way...how many people do you know that would quit their job and move from Southern California to Reno Nevada for their quartet? That is exactly what happened in 1990. When Special Feature's bass's family moved, the rest of the quartet followed. With Raymond on tenor, Paul Olguin on baritone, Jamie Arrington on lead and Billy Hill on bass, Special Feature won the Far Western District quartet contest in 1990 and placed 5th place at international competion in 1993. They did a ton of shows all over the United States and Canada, bounced around the top 10 at international for a few more years and disbanded in early 2000.

That very same year, Raymond got involved with Phoenix area residents Russ Young, Fraser Brown and Rick Wells and Applause! was born. They won the 2000 Far Western District quartet contest and competed at international twice, placing as high as 13th in Nashville in 2001. After that, work commitments forced Raymond to withdraw from the quartet and he spent the next year or so "off the barbershop trail", committing more time to his beautiful wife Pamela and their offspring of cats.

2003 came along and the barbershop bug started drawing blood from Raymond's veins once again. Staying a little closer to home this time, Raymond and bass Mike Stewart along with baritone Cory Hunt, both from Reno, teamed up with Robert Lenoil from Placerville California Q was born. They qualified for International, won their divisional contest, competed at international (placing 28th) and won the Far Western District contest all in the short span of about 10 months. The next year they were 20th at International and soon thereafter, lost their lead and baritone, making Q's career about as short as their name.

Mike and Raymond attended the 2005 Far Western District contest as spectators and basically just sang around and had a good time. Jordan and Gabe had just placed 4th in a quartet called Playback and got together with Raymond and Mike after the contest to do some informal tag singing. They all liked what they heard and about a month later, they decided to give it a whirl as a quartet and Late Show's first rehearsal was in November of 2005. Hoping to make the 76% cut for the International Prelims in March 2006, they were amazed to score 80.2% and eventually ended up in 20th place at International in July 2006. They went on to their own astonishment to win the Far Western District contest in October of the same year scoring 83.2%

This made Raymond the first person in the history of the Far Western District to win the district quartet contest 4 times.

In his "other life" besides barbershop, Raymond is a senior instructor for All American Driving School in Reno NV. He writes and arranges a lot of Late Show's material and is an avid Sci-Fi and video game fanatic. He lives with the love of his life, Pam, his very understanding and supportive wife of over 10 years and their three cats, Tiggy, Thomas B Cat and Indie.