Was (not was)  Biography Different Mothers, Same Rhythm: The History of WAS ( NOT WAS ). David Weiss and Don Fagenson are just like Leiber & Stoller, two Jewish boys who should have been black. While their music had us jigging and gyrating, their lyrics had us gasping and giggling. David was born on October 26, 1952 in a Detroit hospital, his 'brother' Don was born a few weeks earlier, on 13 September 1952, in a nearby hospital. Don's mother was a high school teacher and his father a high-school counselor.. David's parents were both entertainers. In the 1950s his father Rube Weiss played Soupy Sales' sidekick, Shoutin' Shorty Hogan, on the late night Soupy Sales Show, not the kids' version. Both sets of parents were tolerant of their children's eccentricities, which would eventually lead to Was (Not Was).. Although Don lived eight blocks away from David in Oak Park, it wasn't until Oak Park's Clinton Junior High-school in the 1960s that they met each other outside eighth grade gym teachers office while waiting to be punished. David had seen Don performing Midnight Special and a Dylan song in an eighth grade talent show and realized that he was different from other kids. They would meet on the top of the high school bleachers and talk about how they were going to make a record one day. In the Humor Prison, which was the basement of David's parents' house, they would wear funny masks and make tapes on a reel-to-reel machine, and laugh till they couldn't laugh any more. >> more...

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