DeWayne Jessie
American actor
DeWayne Jessie (a.k.a. "Otis Day") is an American character actor best known for his portrayal of fictional frontman Otis Day of Otis Day and the Knights in National Lampoon's Animal House. In the movie, the songs "Shama Lama Ding Dong" and "Shout" were sung by Lloyd G. Williams and lip-synched by Jessie.
In the 1980s, Jessie purchased the rights to the band name Otis Day and The Knights from Universal Studios, and formed a real-life version of the band with some members of his family. He toured the country for years afterward, with Jessie assuming the identity of Otis Day. The group released a concert video, Otis My Man, in 1987 and recorded an album, produced by George Clinton, that came out in 1989 titled Shout which flopped. It included updated versions of "Shout" and "Shama Lama Ding Dong" sung by Jessie.
Jessie and the rest of the band members were initiated as honorary members of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the University of Central Oklahoma in 1985. He lives with three of his grandchildren.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “DeWayne Jessie” is american actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through DeWayne, Jessie and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1179680. VIAF identifies the subject as 9033743. The Library of Congress control number is n92008492. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1989 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “DeWayne Jessie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.