I was born and raised on Chicago’s southwest side – in Hell's Kitchen, Kedzie/Maxwell Street – in 1931. There were great blues musicians, anything you wanted on the streets – bloodtonics, pots and pans – it was a transitional neighborhood. My family was poor but close. The neighborhood mixed in every way. It was a good beginning to learn respect for all people, and what skills were needed to put food on the table. My mother sold yard goods in Goldblatt's Department Store. To this day, I have never seen or met my father. All I’ve ever known is my mother’s family — my grandfather, aunts and uncles. Uncle Fred helped raise me — I called him Uncle Daddy. The extended family taught me what was important — spiritual values, education, music, honesty, caring for others, generosity, love, respect and health.

I was nine years old when I visited my cousin Harold one day. He was practicing his trumpet. I was so mesmerized (what a great gift to be able to make music!) that I brought it home. Music was everywhere in my earlier years on Maxwell Street, but we could not afford to buy an instrument. Now the family was doing better. I delivered magazines and could use some of that money to save up for a trumpet. I played in junior high and high school bands and a jazz combo – and got into gymnastics. I learned that education was my ticket to the future. I was offered a gymnastic scholarship to many colleges but chose to go to Michigan State. Later, I got married while in grad school and worked nights at the Oldsmobile plant in Lansing, MI.

I was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and played trumpet in the Army band at Fort Gordon, GA. One of the guys was a guitar player in the Sauter-Finnegan Band. It was the first time I heard guitar up close since I was a kid on the streets. Guitar until then was not as popular as the trumpet. Guitar was used in the rhythm section but now folk music, bluegrass, blues and classical guitar were beginning to take center stage.

I transferred to Ft. Knox when the band was sent overseas. The Army discovered I had been a grad student doing research. Those days were the beginning of studying the possibility of space travel and we did the research. I was assigned to the Army Medical Research Lab as a research psychologist — and was allowed to live off post in Louisville, KY. In my free time, I played trumpet and French horn with the Louisville Philharmonic (first chair) and took guitar lessons.

After the Army, I moved to Ann Arbor, MI, and went back to school to work on my PhD at University of Michigan and Wayne State University. I took guitar lessons at this time with Glendon Hilge (not realizing it was the beginning of my future). Glen had a guitar store and made guitars in the 1930’s. He wanted me to go into business with him but he got ill and died before we could get serious and I was still finishing my degrees.

I got interested in playing the lute. In my search for one, I met Sam (Sarkus Varjebedian), a shoemaker. Sam made instruments and did marquetry in wood and pearl in the back of his shoe repair shop in Detroit, MI, in the tradition of many hundreds of years passed down to him through his family. I was anxious to learn from him and he was interested in teaching me.

I was teaching guitar out of my home in Ann Arbor and got so many students I needed a place to teach. A small room in the basement of a bookstore on State Street became the first home of Herb David Guitar Studio in April 1962. I was in love with music and the only way to succeed was to give it my all. I left the research lab at Ford Hospital and followed the advice of a great and caring human spirit and mentor Matt Alpern (my former boss at UM medical school). I’ve long since found that the road to a happy and full life is to follow your bliss — your answer is right in front of you. Search for and discover your gifts in those things that infuse you with boundless energy! That was many years ago for me. I did follow my bliss and, as a fortuneteller told me, I am a very lucky person.

Music, sport, spiritual values, education, honesty, love and respect for others have filled my life, allowing me to give something of my gifts to others and this world. Music is the fulcrum that lifted my life from the streets of Chicago to my studio in Ann Arbor.

I wrote something, which like a morning cup of coffee gets me going every morning as I speak it aloud:

I awake, I’m heir to the universe, I rise up and like the stars in heaven know not the bounds of my horizons. I feel the roundness of the earth beneath my feet as I travel my daily path. I am first a good animal – wise as an owl, fleet as a gazelle, fearless as a lion, strong and agile as an ape, swimming like a fish – responsible in my actions and caring of others as a blessed good human being should be; though some days I may waddle like a duck. This is a good day and I will stand tall like a giraffe.