Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview

2026-09-30 · 44 min · episode 20 · 14 entities

episode page audio

Asserted relationships

→ appeared on Living for the City podcast

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evidence rules-v5
Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview
→ hosted by Side Stage person

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Feed author/publisher: Side Stage
→ discusses Music concept

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Feed category: Music
→ discusses Music Commentary concept

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Feed category: Music Commentary
→ discusses Music Interviews concept

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Feed category: Music Interviews
→ discusses Music History concept

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Feed category: Music History
→ references @LivingfortheCityPod website

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Link in episode "Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview": https://youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod

Entities found in this episode

concepts 8

mentioned Music Commentary concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music Commentary
mentioned Music Interviews concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music Interviews
mentioned Music History concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music History
mentioned Living for the City Full Interview concept

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evidence rules-v5
Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview
discusses Music concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music
discusses Music Commentary concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music Commentary
discusses Music Interviews concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music Interviews
discusses Music History concept

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evidence rules-v5
Feed category: Music History

persons 3

mentioned Side Stage person

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evidence rules-v5
Feed author/publisher: Side Stage
mentioned Don Was person

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Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview
hosted by Side Stage person

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evidence rules-v5
Feed author/publisher: Side Stage

websites 2

mentioned @LivingfortheCityPod website

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evidence rules-v5
Link in episode "Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview": https://youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod
references @LivingfortheCityPod website

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evidence rules-v5
Link in episode "Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview": https://youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod

podcasts 1

appeared on Living for the City podcast

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evidence rules-v5
Don Was on Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and His Own Voice | Living for the City Full Interview

Episode description as stored

Don Was is a Detroit native who went from playing bar gigs and gypsy weddings around the city to producing the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, and Bob Dylan, and eventually running Blue Note Records. This is his full conversation with host Hanif Abdurraqib. Was traces the raw, unpretentious sound of Detroit back to the city's one-industry economy and the immigrant communities, Mexican, Arabic, Eastern European, Southern, who brought their music with them after World War II. He talks about coming up broke in the 1970s, working bar gigs for ten dollars a night, and the strange turning point that came from an involuntary Dale Carnegie sales course after he took a job repairing copy machines. He also explains why Detroit's lack of a mentorship culture in engineering and production, unlike the scene around players like Marcus Belgrave, forced him and his peers to invent their own methods, and why that isolation became a creative advantage rather than a handicap. He also breaks down the Detroit radio landscape that shaped him, from the Grande Ballroom and the Amboy Dukes to Electrifying Mojo, the DJ whose genre-blind playlists reshaped how Warner Brothers marketed Black and white artists and helped give rise to Detroit techno. He talks about producing Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time as a turning point for women in rock, the studio access that only a broke city like Detroit could offer him, and why he eventually moved back home to record his own album with Don Was & The Pan Detroit Ensemble. CHAPTERS 00:21 - Detroit's Blue Collar DNA and the Rawness of Its Music 03:26 - The Musical Jambalaya: How Immigrant Communities Shaped Detroit's Sound 04:40 - Broke in Detroit: Bar Gigs, Debt, and the Dale Carnegie Course That Changed Everything 08:51 - No Mentorship, No Cliches: How Isolation Forced a New Sound 13:29 - The Grande Ballroom, the Mump, and Teenage Freedom 17:45 - George Clinton's Sock Hop, Bob Seger's Voice, and the Golden Age of Detroit Radio 21:14 - Electrifying Mojo: The DJ Who Changed Music Globally 26:11 - Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time and a Turning Point for Women in Rock 28:51 - Leaving Detroit and the Advantage of Learning in Isolation 31:28 - Coming Home: Don Was & The Pan Detroit Ensemble, and Why You Should Never Give Up LINKS YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@LivingfortheCityPod Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5KYTveuTY4nydCKG8yTxjJ?si=c184740e2d9f43b5 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-for-the-city/id1895831267 Stay connected! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecitypod/ TAGS / KEYWORDS Don Was, Don Was interview, Rolling Stones producer, Blue Note Records, Was Not Was, Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time, Electrifying Mojo, Detroit techno history, Grande Ballroom, Detroit radio history, Detroit music history, Marcus Belgrave, Pan Detroit Ensemble, Detroit hip hop history, Living for the City podcast, Hanif Abdurraqib, Detroit music culture, Side Stage Network, Live Nation podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices