David Gates

A member of the popular early-'60s/late-'70s soft rock group Bread, David Gates is also a songwriter, keyboardist, vocalist, and producer. His first hit as a songwriter came with the popular Murmaids song "Popsicles and Icicles." Gates was born in Tulsa, OK, to a band director and a piano teacher. Surrounded by music from birth, he was proficient in piano, bass, and guitar by the time he was in high school. In 1957, he received a musical break when Chuck Berry came to Tulsa; Gates had his first hit, "Jo-Baby," with Chuck Berry. The song was written for Gates' high-school sweetheart, Jo Rita, whom he married and had children with while enrolled at the University of Oklahoma. In 1961, the family moved to Los Angeles, and Gates embarked on a career of songwriting and producing. By the end of the '60s, he had worked with Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, and Merle Haggard, and produced the 1965 Glenn Yarbrough hit "Baby the Rain Must Fall."