Dan Bern comes from a musical family. His father was an organ grinder, his mother a bongo player. His sister is a cantor in Virginia. Dan learned his first guitar chords from Lightnin' Hopkins, a neighbor to the Bern's small summer hut in Houston. From Hopkins, Bern got his first few gigs, in Las Vegas, Branson, Missouri, and the two major Disney theme parks.

The Dan Bern Home Page At the age of 4, Dan Bern had written 6 operas, including the famed "Das Madchen mit drei Schuhe," performed in Pittsburgh's 3 Rivers stadium. It was with money from these early works that Bern's family was able to emigrate to a small island just off of Illinois. There Bern began to pursue baseball. Bern pitched the Cubs to World Series titles in the early 80's, and might have been a Hall-of-Fame pitcher had he not developed a bum arm in 1985.