DAVID GATES, the son of a band director and piano teacher, excelled in piano, bass and guitar, and by the time he came to Will Rogers, he was playing in local bands. After attending the University of Oklahoma, David moved to Los Angeles in 1961, working as a music copyist, studio musician and producer for a Who’s Who of recording artists. Success followed when his song Popsicles and Icicles hit number three on the Billboard Hot 100. The Monkees recorded his hit song, Saturday’s Child. By 1970, he had worked with many leading artists, including Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin and Brian Wilson, all while releasing singles of his own on several labels. The second album of David’s band, BREAD, became a breakout success, with the number one single, Make It with You, and was the first of seven consecutive BREAD albums to go Gold. From 1970 to 1973, BREAD charted 11 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, all written and sung by David Gates. The single, Clouds, peaked at number 47 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. A second single, Sail Around The World, reached number 50. In 1975, he released the album, Never Let Her Go. The title track, released as a single, reached number 29 on the Hot 100 chart. His most successful single as a solo artist, The Goodbye Girl, reached number 15 on the Billboard chart in 1978. His next single hit, Took the Last Train, reached number 30 on the Billboard chart. The David Gates Songbook was released in 2002. Frank Sinatra covered the song, If, in a live performance at Madison Square Garden. Boy George took Everything I Own to the top of the UK charts.
David has performed on the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York, Royal Albert Hall in London, and the Grand Old Opry in Nashville, an accomplishment only a few artists have achieved.
WILL ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was built during the Great Depression and opened in the fall of 1939. It is named after "Oklahoma's Favorite Son." William Penn Adair Rogers, who was an American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, radio personality, and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), about 30 miles from Tulsa. As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States, its leading political wit and the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.
Will Rogers High School, an art deco masterpiece, is on the National Register of Historic Places (with historic significance). It has produced many graduates who have distinguished themselves in their careers—of national fame, personal achievement, or social significance. A list of Hall of Fame inductees and their biographies is available at: https://willrogersfoundation.net/.