Being a native son of Manhattan’s San Juan Hill of New York at the tale end of the Harlem Renaissance, Braithewate could count as childhood friends the likes of Theolonius Monk, who even as child was considered gifted at the piano. Braithewate was the second oldest of nine children by parents immigrated from the Barbados Braithewate grew up in home with strict rules that disallowed secular music in the house. Nevertheless, the family was a musical one, where Braitwate’s first introduction to music was in the church.

It wasn’t until his father had passed away while he was in high school that Braithewate began to get into jazz and other popular music of the time. When the United States entered into World War II, David enlisted in the U.S. Navy becoming one of the early black seamen who were not simply cooks and stewards serving navy officers after World War II.

After the Navy, David went to a trade school to become an electronic engineer. This led to his first job in quality control in a television and radio assembly plant. He would test each television and radio and repair anything that didn’t work. He decided to pick up a second job at a radio station, the oldest public radio in the nation, WNYC, to fill in time before he went to bed––not for the money but to learn about recording equipment and producing music. Because of his background as a technician, he was hired on to install, repair, maintain, and operate the stations.

After a year, he went to work for WLIB, a jazz station up until 1950’s when it began serving the black community and playing urban contemporary, R&B, and gospel music. He worked for the station for 17 years doing the same sort of work there as he did in WNYC along with interviewing significant public figure at the time, including union and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolf, Jackie Robinson, WC Handy, and Langston Hughes to name a few.

Braithewate applied for a job at Atlantic Records, explaining that he “needed something to do at 1 a.m. So I went to work at Atlantic records.”

Braithewaite was interviewed and hired by Tom Dowd, the legendary producer and recording engineer at Atlantic. He was of one the innovators of multi-track recording and would produce some of the great Atlantic albums in the 1960s, such as Ray Charles, The Drifters, The Coasters, Cream, and Allmand Brothers and captured jazz masterpieces by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Thelonius Monk, and Charlie Parker. In fact it was Dowd's idea to cut Ray Charles' recording of "What'd I Say" into two parts and release them as the "A" and "B" sides of one 45rpm single record.
“I started wiring and putting in patch bays, I was fast. Tom Dowd would say, ‘are you done with that yet,’” Braithewate would respond, ‘oh yeah Tom I’m ready for you. I had a teacher that was a stickler for perfection; I learned to do it right from the start. Anyway I started cutting demos for the radio stations to play.”

Braithewate and Dowd became good friends thereafter.

David, who noted that the only way to learn anything was to get a job, began his education in engineering of recordings and mixing the sound at Atlantic, leading him to produce for artists unknown artists at the time using the company’s facilities with their blessing so he thought. It in fact didn’t go over very well with his bosses and he was let go as a result. Dowd, whom David remained friends with, recommended he go to Motown, where he was hired on as a sound engineer.

At Motown, David got to see firsthand how the legendary organization brought and molded new people into the system. “I came in and did assembly work they built everything there in their own shop. If someone said they had the best amplifier, they would test it and use till it burned out and they rebuild it and make changes to for their purpose or just junk it.”

David explained how management would bring him in to just watch and listen, eventually becoming part of the incredible recording team in Detroit.

“It was very well run, like the Ford Motor Co. It was an assembly line, David explained. “We were open for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with quality control.

“We would sit around for a quality control meeting every week and Berry Gordy (founder of Motown) would ask if it is it a smash hit or not? And everyone in the room would give their vote and the reason why they thought the record was the way they voted majority ruled, even if it sometimes went against B.G. and a record he had done.”

Braithewate engineered the sound on such work as Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour,” with the only designation that engineers would receive there would be a code, “I was D-4.” As in any organization that reach quality control by consensus, politics and bruised egos are likely to occur. Braithewate expressed regret that a thin skin led him to leave Motown after a quality control meeting where his he and his team seemed especially targeted for criticism. He would eventually return to Motown, but only to maintain the company’s sound equipment.

After Motown, Braithewate brought his family out to California in 1969 after becoming Ray Charles personal sound engineer. To his chagrin, Braithewate found himself reunited with his old friend Tom Dowd, who told Ray he should hire him. “He is a good man,” Dowd said. Ray spent a good deal of time on the road and the first order of business was to rebuild a studio. “Two other people, who I hired––and myself––tore and replaced every wire in the place” Over a short period of time a new studio was built, replacing the old three track system that Charles had.

Braithewate would work on three of Ray Charles albums including, “My Kind of Jazz” LP‘s, “Love Country Style” and “America,” over the course of five years. David eventually converted the studio into a sixteen-track set up for Charles in 1974. Though they would remain friends, Braithewate left after an incident where he felt Ray belittled his experience and expertise.

Braithewate’s pursuit of musical knowledge and perfection led him to spend a great deal of time away from home and family––resulting in him becoming both witness and participant in some of the great moments of music history.