Chic Johnson News Today

Actor and singer Bill Hayes appeared in 2,141 episodes of “Days of Our Lives” over 5 1/2 decades, and had a top-selling 1955 single, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” that remains seared into the memories of the baby boom generation.

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 (

The 1950s series Davy Crockett sparked a schoolboy craze for coonskin hats with bushy tails and a spike in raccoon fur sales

Bill Hayes, the actor and singer who with his real-life wife, Susan Seaforth Hayes, starred on NBC's Days of Our Lives, has died. He was 98.