Not Gramophone, Gramaphone
Working as music director at Sound Recorders, Davis traded daytime hours for studio time to record Mannheim Steamroller material at night. The group's first album, Fresh Aire, drew little interest from conventional distributors, so Davis decided to push it under his own label, American Gramaphone. That name resulted from an error, rather than a joke. Davis wanted to play upon the Deutsche Gramophone label, but a logo designer accidentally misspelled the second word and the company remains American Gramaphone.

Davis convinced stereo showroom managers that the Steamroller sound was ideal for demonstrating the acoustical range of home stereo systems. The music began to attract more attention (to the tune of 20,000 orders) than the equipment playing it.

Did Davis follow the usual musical route and take off for Nashville, LA or New York? Forget those music industry hubs. The Grammy Award-winning composer/musician/businessman is operating his music and retail empire from the heart of the Midwest—Omaha, Nebraska, where, because he lives in the country among cows and horses, he calls himself an "entremanure."

By 1999, Mannheim Steamroller/American Gramaphone was at the top of several of Billboard's charts beating out Yanni, John Tesh and Ottmar Liebert. And Davis was marketing a lot more than music under the Mannheim Steamroller logo.

Chocolate and coffee a la Mannheim
From a non-descript building outside Omaha, Davis holds court over a catalog business that has a core mailing of one million and features, besides his music, products of his own design and selection, including a gift tin of cinnamon hot chocolate (eight tons were sold in one year alone), coffee, Nebraska Steak Salt Seasoning, T-shirts, caps, jackets, home theater equipment, a massage lounger, telescopes, and for $150 the score in Davis's own hand and his original notes for creating the Mannheim Steamroller version of Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus.

Ideas come to Davis as he sits in his home studio. The room is equipped with scrim and footlights for establishing various moods. The black-foam ceiling blinks with constellations he and his daughter Kelly designed to represent the astrological signs of family members, including wife Trisha and son Evan. The world is a toy for Chip Davis.

The sounds of nature heard on his recordings are from his own backyard. The innards of the plain building set into a Nebraska hillside contain all the bells, whistles and flashing lights an electronic geek could ask for. Here's a room filled with red crinolines, there's a make-up room for video work, another with gingerbread men costumes. Studios and offices of various sizes and for myriad uses. Tucked away in a corner of one studio is a Star Trek pinball machine.

Another hot idea
"I use the whole-life approach," Davis says. "I like to stay on the edge in different aspects. All disciplines here are interfaced." Perhaps that's why the line between Davis's private life and his business life sometimes disappears. The habanero peppers he grew in the garden in front of his house were so profuse that Davis is now developing a hot sauce that will be featured in a future catalog. The observatory in the middle of his 100 acres has an 8-inch, computer-driven telescope. You can check out what's happening in the 60-acre pasture by going to www.SkyAire.com.

Not one who would rest on his laurels—not one who rests much period—Davis is planning a camp for the performing arts since, according to him, Nebraska doesn't have one. "The idea is to use the camp as a high school for the performing arts during the academic year," he says, "and a camp during the summer." The architect's model is set up in his main studio.

'I'm a conduit,' says Davis of his diverse musical and business enterprises.

Ideas come to Davis from various stimuli and in a variety of situations. Sometimes he writes in his home studio from 4:30-5 a.m. and then heads for the office. After dinner he will listen to what he created that morning. "I don't want to color my thinking with too many outside influences," he says. "But I am fascinated with astronomy and I'm interested in how it helps you think creatively."

If all this sounds like toys for adults, you could be right. But Davis, who at times seems more kid than adult, thrives in an atmosphere of wonder at all that is around him. "I'm a conduit," Davis says. "The people who like my music like these other things, too. I sort things out for them."

Mannheim at Michigan
When the U-M College of Engineering dedicated the Lurie Tower on North Campus in 1996 in memory of Robert H. Lurie '64 BSE, '66 MSE, the six children of Ann and Robert Lurie commissioned Chip Davis to compose a piece, "True Blue," for the Tower's Lurie Carillon. (See "Pragmatic Partners" by Bill Vlasic, Spring 1997 issue, for the story of the entrepreneurial partnership of Lurie and Sam Zell '63, '66JD.)

The CD True Blue: Carillon Music at the University of Michigan, is available by mail from: The University Carillonist, 900 Burton Tower, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1270. Make check for $13 (includes handling and postage) payable to "University of Michigan."

This February, Davis gave a master class in electronic composition at the School of Music. He has helped the University in other ways, too. He returned to campus for a concert to benefit the Michigan Marching Band. And in late 2000, while sipping coffee in a Jacuzzi in Orlando, Florida, he envisioned an arrangement of "O Tannenbaum" with a grand opening by U-M's Men's Glee Club and vocals by Johnny Mathis. The Glee Club recorded the piece last April in Hill Auditorium. And that performance, with Mathis, appears on the Christmas 2001 CD "Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Extraordinaire," available at music stores and on the Web.