Before the interviews, before the mic, before the Mason you hear on the radio—he was just a kid in Detroit, growing up in the Brewster Projects, with the sound of Motown literally in the air.
“You didn’t have to buy a record. You could walk down the street and hear Smokey rehearsing through the window.”
For Mason, music wasn’t something that lived on the radio. It lived in the neighborhood. Hitsville U.S.A.—Motown’s world-famous studio—was just blocks away. On any given afternoon, you could hear basslines bleeding through bricks. Harmony floating over the rooftops. Real music, being born right in front of you.
“We’d play in the alley and stop when someone started singing. It could be Marvin. Could be Stevie. Could be the Temptations working out their steps.”
That was life in Detroit in the ’60s and ’70s. The greatest Black music ever made wasn’t distant—it was local. It felt like family. And for Mason, that planted something deep.
“It made me believe this wasn’t some unreachable dream. If they could make it out the block, maybe I could too.”
Years later, Mason would find himself in studios with the same people he heard through the windows. Hosting interviews. Telling their stories. But no matter how high he climbed, that sound of rehearsal—the unfiltered, unpolished genius of Detroit’s streets—never left him.
“I remember being a teenager and seeing the Jacksons on TV. And thinking, ‘I know that sound. That’s our sound. That’s Detroit, polished and packaged.’”
Now, with decades in radio under his belt, Mason still sees his career as part of that Motown legacy—not because he sang, but because he carried the story forward.
“I didn’t need to be in the group. I just needed a mic. And a story worth telling.”
