When we talk about someone who is true to this, not new to this, we’re talking about a certified OG like Don Was. A living legend in the music industry, the multitalented Don Was has done it all and then some.

Was worked as a producer on eight different Rolling Stones albums, produced the B-52’s immortal Cosmic Thing album and “Love Shack,” hosted a nationally syndicated radio show on Sirius XM, won an Emmy for Outstanding Music Direction on “The Beatles: The Night That Changed America,” and fathered three successful musicians including a son in the vastly underrated band and Twitter account Eve 6.

Don’s played bass on Bob Dylan and Bob Seger records and produced for the likes of Willie Nelson, Carly Simon, Elton John, Ziggy Marley, John Mayer, and an endless list of other Starrs, including Ringo. He sang background vocals for Roy Orbison, played piano for Kris Kristofferson, synthesizer for Michael McDonald, and keyboard for Khaled. Was even landed a bunch of his own hits throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s with his cult classic band Was (Not Was).

Oh, and Don dipped his toes into the Hollywood scene, too, working as a consultant or music supervisor on a laundry list of all-time classics including Thelma and Louise, Days of Thunder, Tin Cup, and a small indie film you may have heard of called Toy Story. And that’s just the T’s. His resume is breathtaking.

But no matter where music has taken Don Was in his life, and it’s taken him everywhere, he always comes back home. A bass player from Detroit, Don was destined to fall in love with jazz. As a kid, he was obsessed with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the brilliant musicians on Blue Note Records. And after accomplishing seemingly everything he could have ever dreamed of in the music industry, things came full circle when he accepted the top spot at Blue Note almost a decade ago. A homecoming of sorts, it also represented one of the biggest challenges of Don’s career.

I caught up with the head of Blue Note Records to discuss his deep love of jazz, his thoughts on the metamorphosis the music industry has experienced during his long career, and his favorite way to listen to tunes.

DUKE LONDON: How’s it going, Don? Appreciate you taking the time.
DON WAS: Of course, I’m really glad to do it. It’s really an incredible collaboration, certainly the best stuff we’ve ever been involved in.

We do a lot of music projects but this one we’ve had circled on the calendar all year. We’re all about doing new and exciting things that also celebrate nostalgia and the past. One of our mottos is “moving forward, looking back.” So I love the Blue Note collab because we get to celebrate this insane discography and archive and history but also shine a light on amazing new artists you guys have. But let’s jump right in. Can you tell me a little bit about what attracted you to this job at Blue Note almost 10 years ago?
Well, the music kind of jumped out of the speakers at me and that’s how I was pulled into this world. I was 14 years old, in 1966, and I was driving around running errands with my mother in Detroit. I was grumpy and I didn’t want to be running errands with her. I wanted to be hanging out with my friends. And I was just being an asshole, you know. So she left me in the car with the keys and I was playing with the radio dial. I was going to the R&B station, WCHB, and on Sundays, they were playing jazz. I tuned in just as the saxophone solo was beginning on a song called “Mode For Joe” by Joe Henderson. And if you listen to the song at about 1:26, this is where it happened. His saxophone comes in and he’s not playing notes or anything, there are just these anguished cries emitting from his sax. And it captured my mood, it was exactly how I felt, you know, being stuck with my mom all day. But as soon as the solo gets about 20 seconds in, the drummer Joe chambers comes in and starts grooving. And Joe Henderson’s sax kind of falls into place. And there’s a message that came through, which was to groove in the face of adversity. It actually calmed me down, listening to the music. And I got the point, I got a verbal message from this nonverbal music. And when my mom got back in the car, I was a nicer kid. And I was in a good mood.

She was probably like, “Wow, what happened?”
Exactly. It was like accidentally taking a hit of acid. [Laughs] So I was intrigued. I went out and bought a portable FM radio so I could listen at home. And I soon realized that I was digging a lot of the music that was coming out from this little independent label in New York called Blue Note. And then, when I saw the artwork, and those black-and-white photographs that the co-founder Francis Wolff took, I was just completely drawn in. I wanted to be part of that world. And that was as a 14-year-old. Blue Note’s music has stuck with me always, and it’s been a constant in my life since then. So, it was a freak thing that I got offered the gig and I couldn’t say no.

That’s incredible. Such a full-circle experience. How has Blue Note, and the music industry as a whole, changed in the decades since you’ve been running the label?
Well, in terms of the distribution and marketing of music, everything has changed. But the essence of it actually hasn’t changed at all. And that’s really the part that I get off on, you know? Music is there to enable freedom of expression. We’re there to allow artists to communicate something deeper to listeners, something from deep inside that helps them understand their lives. We’re there to enable them to make the music unfettered, and to get it in the hands and ears of as many people as possible.

It’s about great, communicative music that means something to people. I think there are two kinds of music. Basically, there’s selfish and there’s generous music. Selfish music is, “look how many notes I can play,” 30 notes in the space of one bar, and there are like, self-indulgent acrobats out there who are entertaining. And you have to admire the work that went into it, but it’s not moving you emotionally. It’s more like watching gymnastics or something. But a generous musician feels something deep inside. The words don’t exist for me to communicate it properly. But I can use this medium to communicate it to you and maybe this will help you understand something is going on in your life that you can’t apply words to. That’s the whole ball of wax.

What’s your discovery process? How do you find new music?
Well, the main process is keeping my ears open as I walk around on the streets. And probably the greatest invention for me has been Shazam. Wherever I am, I got it on my watch, I got it on my phone. When I hear something that speaks to me, could be from across the street or in a store somewhere, I find out what it is. And I listen, I go in for the kill. But I think the important thing is just keeping your ears open.

What’s your favorite way to listen to music? Is it in the car? Is it a certain seat in your house or at your desk? Do you wear headphones or use a big speaker system?
I’m not a fanatic. You know, I don’t mind listening to music through an iPhone speaker, to be honest with you. I grew up listening to music on transistor radios that had the little one-inch speakers in them. And when I was a little kid, I’d put that under my pillow. The Beatles sounded amazing on a transistor radio. “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, man when that kick came on, that snare drum crack in the opening intro from the get-go, that sounded amazing on a transistor radio. So, I actually find it to be nostalgic, in a way, listening on my iPhone speaker. Sometimes, I barbecue at home, and you can go online and you can find baseball games from the 1960s, like really old Detroit Tigers games, and I’ll listen on my iPhone because it sounds just like my old transistor radio.

That’s incredible.
I’m not fussy, but I got good stuff too, you know? I have a good turntable, and I need to be playing records all the time. I need to be able to hear it you know, if I’m jumping from studio to studio, sometimes there isn’t time for you to acclimate to the new system that you’re listening to. And you get your frame of reference back. So I take headphones around with me and I have that constant no matter where I am. I can put those in and have a frame of reference.

What’s it been like to see this resurgence of vinyl? And as a second part to the question, as someone who appreciates the physical medium and the artwork and everything involved with an album’s release, how important is it that we keep vinyl and things like that alive so that people get more than just a little one-inch thumbnail album cover on streaming services?
I think it’s a nice touch. I think it’s nice to have something to hold on to, to have some photos that you can actually see. It’s nice to be able to give people credits in the same place that the music lives, to see who played on everything, the engineers, who the producers are. I think it’s nice to have someone write some liner notes to set the stage a little bit. I love it. I love the sound of vinyl. It’s a weird thing, but if you listen to your master tapes and the final mixes from the original source, and then listen to vinyl, it’s a distortion of what you did. It doesn’t sound exactly the same as your final mix. But it’s a great distortion. A little bit of dirt.

Vinyl is warmer, you hear the little snap crackle pops and it makes the music feel more real like it’s in the room with you.
I agree completely. And there are all these studies about harmonics and digital cuts off vital harmonics. If you record at 96k or 192, it’s improved to the point where you really have to go in with an oscilloscope to see the difference, and only a really trained ear can pick it out. But there’s just something in that sound that’s evocative. And there’s also something about seeing something spinning around. There’s something physical taking place. You can’t see an MP3 being played. But the first time I played my kids a record on a turntable, we sat around looking at the turntable like we were sitting around a fire. It became a kind of communal enterprise. And that was nice.

Are you anti-shuffle? Should an album be heard in the order it was intended?
I love being surprised! I’m not anti-shuffle, just anti-shitty music. [Laughs] I can deal with all the formats. I like being surprised, I think that’s one of the things people like about radio. You don’t know what’s coming.

The excitement of your favorite song coming on without you hitting play on your favorite song. It was different.
Yep. You know, I do a weekly radio show with the NPR station in Detroit, where I’m from. I always dreamed I’d have a show when I was a teenager. And I put a lot of time into picking the songs, I’m not cavalier about it. Part of it is the segues that are going to surprise and delight. You know, I like going from Drake to Sun Ra, when it works. It gives you a little jolt of dopamine when you get a good segue like that.

Where is the new generation of jazz artists taking the genre?
You know, fundamentally, it hasn’t changed. It’s just the times have changed and the musicians reflect the times. And I think that’s one of the reasons that Black American music is so evocative, even in cultures where people don’t share a common experience. Someone in Tibet can be moved by Wayne Shorter and I think that’s because you express your emotional life through nonverbal language. That’s the foundation of jazz, really. And in every era, the musicians who’ve risen to the top of the field have simply reflected the times they live in. For example, Robert Glasper is a musician who’s absorbed all the fundamentals of what came before him. He understands what Thelonious Monk did, he understands what Herbie Hancock did. But because he grew up when he did, if you listen to one of his solos, he’s going to quote a McDonald’s commercial. He’s going to quote J Dilla. You can’t have lived in America in the last 20 or 30 years and not have absorbed some hip-hop. And you can go back to Thelonious Monk in 1948 who just changed everything. He changed composition, changed the way you voiced chords, he changed the way you played behind the soloist. And the guys who started Blue Note, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, could have picked anybody in music to record and they took a chance on one of the most outside guys because he was doing something radically different. Blue Note has always pushed boundaries, and pushing boundaries is timeless.

Who are some of the artists currently on Blue Note who are pushing boundaries and breaking the mold like that?
Hopefully all of them. [Laughs] There are some young guys like Joel Ross or James Francies, are all guys in their 20s doing some radically different stuff. They could sit in with older musicians and still blow everybody away, but they’re approaching music very differently.

Speaking of Robert Glasper, and his work on To Pimp A Butterfly, what have been some of your favorite old Blue Note samples used in new songs? And what are your thoughts on the process of sampling as a whole?
I think it’s a fantastic development. The way it came about is so quirky, that people started playing turntables because they didn’t have instruments. And that it’s turned into such an accepted art form is nothing short of brilliant. Obviously, the stuff that Tribe Called Quest did is amazing. Whether it’s “Think Twice” by Donald Byrd, which they sampled, and also J Dilla sampled it on “Welcome to Detroit.” I think that’s great. Our biggest samples probably come from “Ode to Billie Joe” by Lou Donaldson, which has been used a whole bunch of times, with Biggie’s “One More Chance” being probably the best example. It’s incredible and I absolutely believe in the trickle-down eventually leading you back to the original artists.