Dan Hicks, (born December 9, 1941, in Little Rock, Arkansas),[1] was the son of a career military man. At age five, Hicks moved with his family to California, eventually settling north of San Francisco in Santa Rosa, where he was a drummer in grade school and played the snare drum in his school marching band. At 14, he was performing with area dance bands. While in high school, he had a rotating spot on Time Out for Teens, a daily 15-minute local radio program, and he went on to study broadcasting at San Francisco State College during the late 1950s and early 1960s.