Entertainment: Stoking the Steamroller

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Davis' business model might be called a Mannheim for All Seasons, which is also the name of one of his CD collections. Last year's Romantic Melodies targeted Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Easter. American Spirit, a collection including America the Beautiful and Star Spangled Banner, hit the window from Memorial Day to July 4. Davis keeps a hand in all phases of Mannheim Steamroller production. He composes, arranges and plays drums with the band. As owner of the label, he rakes in as much as $6 on every album sold, compared with the $1 or less many other major artists make. Back in the 1980s, Davis promoted Mannheim Steamroller by offering its trademark mixture of New Age melodies interspersed with sound effects (notably in the Fresh Aire CD series) to stereo and hi-fi dealers as demonstration tracks. Since then, he has set up a specialized distribution network, allowing him to sell at more than 40,000 non music retail outlets, including sporting-goods vendors, supermarkets, greeting-card emporiums and truck stops.

Mannheim Steamroller Lifestyle products, such as a spray-on barbecue sauce called Bry that Davis cooked up in his kitchen, complement the music. Sunday Morning Coffee, a CD of nonintrusive instrumentals to accompany reading the morning newspaper, helped launch Mannheim Steamroller's branded coffee and cinnamon hot chocolate, which have racked up nearly $2.5 million in sales.

The nerve center of this musical empire is Davis' home, on a 100-acre ranch outside Omaha, just 20 miles from the Strategic Air Command and its huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. He lives with his wife, his three children and several German shepherds and raises chickens, holds barbecues and peers through the telescope of his own astronomical observatory. In his basement is a well-equipped recording studio, in which he composes and mixes. Microphones are planted in the surrounding woodlands to record the natural sounds he incorporates into sound tracks. A private jet sits on a tarmac 15 minutes away by car.

A third-generation musician, Davis grew up in Sylvania, Ohio, and acquired a degree in bassoon from the University of Michigan. He began writing jingles and catchy versions of classical compositions. Then came the big break: Davis co-wrote a jingle for a bread company chronicling a fictional long-haul trucker named C.W. McCall and his main squeeze Mavis, a waitress at the "Old Home Filler-Up an' Keep On A-Truckin' Cafe." The ad eventually became the theme song of Convoy.

Davis has been throwing his considerable energy into nonprofit work. He recently paid to have a six-speaker sound system installed in a Minneapolis children's cancer-research center to see whether music provided the patients with comfort and relaxation. It did. Davis is planning meetings at several other major medical institutions to explore the possibility of a line of holistic musical balm. "You just try to connect the dots," says the Christmas elf. "One good thing might lead to another." In Davis' case, it already has.