Anna Carter Gordon Davis

Effie Juanita Carter Gordon Davis, known as Anna Davis (February 15, 1917 – March 5, 2004), was a gospel music pioneer who sold more than 30 million records in 40 years of affiliation with Columbia Records. In 1999, she was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame. She was the second wife of Governor Jimmie Davis of Louisiana, who was also a singer and songwriter known particularly for "You Are My Sunshine". The two were wed from 1969 until his death in 2000 at the age of 101.

A native of Shannon in Clay County in north Texas, she contracted pneumonia while in her teens. David Parker Carter, her father, known as "Dad" Carter, formed the Carter Quartet, which was added to the schedule of KFYO (AM) radio in Lubbock. This enabled the Carters to pay for Anna's medicine. In 1936, the Carters began a 15-minute daily program on WBAP in Fort Worth as the Chuck Wagon Gang.^[1]

Her first husband, Howard Gordon, was the electric guitarist for the group until his death in 1967, the same year that Alverne Adams Davis, the first Mrs. Jimmie Davis, also died. Anna Davis had two sons, William and Greg Gordon, and a daughter, Vicki Gordon Owens. Her surviving brother was Clyde Carter; her sisters, Bettye Goodwin, Ruth Ellen Yates, and Anne Everett. Bettye and Ruth also played in the band. She died in Fort Worth.^[1]

Jimmie Davis had five Top Five country singles during his first term as governor from 1944 to 1948. He was governor for a second nonconsecutive term from 1960 to 1964. In 1972, a year after he lost a comeback bid for governor, he was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.^[1]

More than a half-century after the formation in 1936 of the Chuck Wagon Gang, the group was named Gospel Group of the Year five consecutive times by Music City News in the late 1980s.^[1]