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BiTS: Tell me how you got working with Don Was.

RJ: I was playing with a guy named Michael Henderson at the time, and he had been with Miles
Davis, and we had written a song called ‘Wide Receiver’, then it became a hit and I was actually
coming into the studio one morning. Don had a deal with the studio called Sound Suite that he

could work after hours there, working on what ultimately became Was (Not Was). Don was one
of the first people to do remixes and he was into that, European remixes and stuff like that and
that was how he was sort of making extra money and stuff like that. That was how I first met

him. I walked in the studio, and he was there, and he knew me by name, but we didn’t know
each other. He asked me about the song ‘Wide Receiver’, man, how did you come up with that?
How did you go about getting a hit record and stuff like that? I told him it’s like voodoo. Nobody
really knows. You do something that you like and you hope that there are like-minded people
and that was the way it was with me and Michael Henderson. We would just hang together, or
even if I didn’t write for him I would help him. I would do arrangements of things that he wanted

to do. But that’s how I met Don and then Don asked me to come back the next night and I played
on Chrysalis, and that was the first thing I’d ever played on for him.

Because the first Was (Not Was) record was already out, “Woodwork Squeaks And ... Out Come
The Freaks” and all that stuff, and a guy that I admired a lot, Bruce Nazarian, was the guitar
player for that. So that was sort of how we met and then after that, I was in. I started doing some
of his productions with him and that kind of stuff and we did Helen Terry and her record and
what was that guy from Manchester? Too Drunk to Funk. I can’t forget the name of the band,
but we did stuff like that. It was very cool. It was a very fun time, very creative time for me
working with him, and all I can say is from that time to now, he’s still the same guy. Don just
loves the music and he loves music history and it’s great to see him doing all these great things.
I just saw him recently. The Boneshakers were in Washington DC and he was playing – we had
done an early show, so we went to see him play with The Last Waltz and it was fantastic. But
I’m always very proud of the whole Was (Not Was) experience. I’m still like one of the only guys
that does music from Was (Not Was). There’s not a whole lot of us that actually play the songs,
so I’m the one guy that does.

BiTS: It was wonderful music, there’s no doubt about that at all. I gather sometimes you’re
called Randy Dynamite. Is that a nickname that you approve of?

RJ: It was a nickname given to me – I even tell people I don’t think it was a compliment at the
time, but I was playing with Brook Benton and being young like I was, sometimes you don’t
necessarily think about the song content. So I’m playing ‘The Boll Weevil Song’, which is