Isn't your experience/education and several rounds of interviews enough? There's definitely a weirdness to calling old bosses/coworkers and asking them to take a call about you.
And if you've been unemployed for awhile and lost contact with previous references? Shit, some of your prior coworkers/managers could've died of COVID in the last two years (about in 1 in 300 Americans did, leading cause of death in the US). So if your references just aren't there, should you be immediately disqualified for a job? Seems fucked. What do you guys think?