“I was acutely aware of Detroit’s jazz scene while growing up,” he says via phone. Don Was and the Pan Detroit Ensemble perform at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27, at Music Box Supper Club. “I missed a lot of stuff being too young. In 1966, I discovered there was a jazz station in Detroit. Primarily, there was one guy, Ed Love, who’s in his 90s now and is still on WDET. He played great music and promoted shows in Detroit. I was able to go to his shows where he featured local openers.”
Was, who currently heads up the jazz imprint Blue Note Records, says he was also a “rock ’n’ roll kid” who followed Detroit proto-punks the MC5 and radical writer John Sinclair.
“It’s an incredible thing in Detroit,” he says. “I can’t quite explain it. There’s an inordinate number of jazz musicians from Detroit on the Blue Note roster. There’s Donald Byrd, Joe Henderson, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Burrell, Hank Jones, Ron Carter, Paul Chambers, and it goes on. There’s a staggering number. There’s something intrinsic in the music of Detroit that is relevant all over the world and resonates. There’s a universal spine to Detroit music. There’s a rawness and honesty that come from a working class town.”
Was says that Cleveland has a similar feel to it because it too has a working class ethos.
“The audiences in Detroit and Cleveland have always felt the same to me,” he says. “Even going back to the MC5 and the Stooges. Cleveland was a big town for those bands. We all spoke the same language.”
Was traces the idea for the Pan-Detroit Ensemble to an idea he had as a teenager and says the concept has percolated in his mind for decades.
“I remember in 1968 walking home from high school thinking of how cool it would be to have Miles Davis and Merle Haggard in a band together,” he says. “I could hear what that would sound like. I was always facing that. If I have a complaint about the music we made with Was (Not Was), it’s that you can see the seams where we sewed the rock and R&B and jazz together. I wish it were a little more seamless. That’s what I always heard. I knew it would require some work to chase it up and realize that sound. If that’s the thing that is your vision, it can be frightening to chase it and run the risk of not getting it, especially on the world stage. I always put it off. There were always other things to do.”
By “other things to do,” he means producing records for acts such as the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, the B-52’s, Wayne Shorter, John Mayer and Charles Lloyd. In 1995 he produced and directed a documentary about the life of Brian Wilson, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, that won the San Francisco Film Festival’s Golden Gate Award. As a film composer, he won the 1994 British Academy Award (BAFTA) for Best Original Score in recognition of his work on the film Backbeat. If that weren’t enough, in 2018, he joined Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir to form the Wolf Brothers.
A couple of years ago, jazz great Terence Blanchard called Was because he was curating a series of Detroit jazz for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
“He asked me to do a night, and I said I would,” says Was. “He asked me about two years in advance, and about six months before, I realized I had to put a band together. I wasn’t sure how to start. I went back to Detroit and got back with some people who listened to the same music, so we could all speak the language of Detroit.”
The Pan Detroit band includes saxophonist Dave McMurray, Eminem’s Oscar-winning collaborator keyboardist Luis Resto, trombonist Vincent Chandler, trumpeter John Douglas, drummer Jeff Canaday, percussionist Mahindi Masai, guitarist Wayne Gerard and singer Steffanie Christi’an.
“We just got together to play, but the minute we started playing together, it felt like we’d been playing together for decades,” says Was. “It was really comfortable. When you have that chemistry, it’s not to be taken lightly, so we have kept doing it.”
“Loser,” a Dead song that Was played with Weir, is part of the Pan Detroit set and becomes an epic soul/jazz number in their hands.
“Singer Steffanie Chrsti’an sings the shit out of the song,” says Was, who adds that Weir has heard the Pan Detroit version of the tune and loves it. “Approaching the music with a sense of jocular fearlessness is something I picked up from Bobby [Weir]. It’s fun. We enjoy ourselves. Don’t be afraid to crash the car into a brick wall. People will accept that. They know that you’re trying to get someplace new in a higher gear.”
Was first heard “Midnight Marauders,” another moody track that the group covers, in a hotel room in France.
“When we talked about putting the band together, I was in a hotel in France, and it came on,” says Was. “I Shazam-ed it and said, ‘Oh man, this sounds like our band.’”
Was’s musical career started in the 1970s, and he played in a band while still in high school. Given the changes he’s seen in the music industry, it’s remarkable that his passion remains unchanged.
“The distribution has done a complete 180, but the function of music and the higher calling has never changed,” he says. “It’s about artists who feel something deep in inside and can’t communicate it through conversational language but use music to communicate those feelings. Having listeners on the other end who receive it and feel if not something similar, something as strong helps their lives out and makes them feel some comfort and joy and like they’re not alone in the world. It helps us make sense of our lives, which are basically chaotic. Music can at the very least soothe and at its best point you to a higher state of consciousness.”
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This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 12, 2025.