David Alan Samuels was born October 9, 1948, in Waukegan, Illinois, and grew up in Winnetka. He started on drums at six, but by the time he reached Boston University, where he earned a psychology degree, he had moved to mallet instruments; he continued his studies at Berklee College of Music with vibraphonist Gary Burton. In 1974 he began performing with vibraphonist David Friedman in Double Image, a vibraphone/marimba duo that continued working together for almost half a century.

A 1977 Double Image concert in Buffalo led to an invitation to play vibes on Spyro Gyra's debut album; Samuels toured and recorded with the band intermittently before becoming a full-time member in 1984, remaining for the next decade and becoming a defining textural voice in the band's sound. The band's own story is told in full in Spyro Gyra's JazzProfiles.com profile.

In 1993, Samuels assembled an entirely separate project for a one-off Central Park Zoo concert, teaming with saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and steel drummer Andy Narell as the Caribbean Jazz Project. The group's 2002 album The Gathering, featuring Samuels alongside D'Rivera and flutist Dave Valentin, won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album, the defining achievement of his career as a leader.

Samuels was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2013 and largely stopped performing publicly afterward, aside from a handful of special appearances. He died April 22, 2019, at age 70, a member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.

Samuels's playing bridged two distinct worlds: the jazz-funk textures he brought to Spyro Gyra's mid-1980s sound, and the Latin jazz vocabulary he pursued as leader of the Caribbean Jazz Project, drawing on steel-drum and Afro-Caribbean rhythmic traditions well outside the smooth-jazz mainstream his other band operated in.