Don Was

Don Edward Fagenson (born September 13, 1952), known professionally as Don Was (/wʌz/), is an American musician, bassist, record producer, music director, film composer, documentary filmmaker and radio host. Since 2011, he has also served as president of the American jazz label Blue Note Records.

For his work as a record producer, he has won six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year in 1989 for Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time and Producer of the Year in 1994. 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. He won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for his work on the CBS TV special The Beatles: The Night That Changed America.

Records that he has produced have sold close to 100 million albums for a wide range of artists including The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Wayne Shorter, Kris Kristofferson, Iggy Pop, The B-52s, Brian Wilson, Elton John, Garth Brooks and Ryan Adams.

He came to prominence in the 1980s in the band Was (Not Was). He also toured as a member of Bob Weir's Wolf Bros from 2018 until Weir's death in 2026.

Born in Detroit, Was graduated from Oak Park High School in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor but dropped out after the first year. A journeyman musician, he grew up listening to the Detroit blues sound and the jazz music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, amongst many others. As a teenager, Was was influenced by 1960s counterculture, most notably John Sinclair.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.