Chris Sheridan wrote his first jazz article for the former UK magazine, Jazz Monthly, in 1964 when aged 20 and still at Oxford University, where he had a jazz column in the university magazine Isis. The latter included an interview that year with the then as now reclusive Sonny Rollins. A desire to become a full-time jazz writer failed to impress Down Beat and, instead, Sheridan went into general journalism, serving as a reporter for the Western Mail in Cardiff, then the national newspapers The Sunday Citizen and The Daily Mirror. During this period he suspended his jazz writing, instead "woodshedding" (trying to learn something about the subject before rattling off on it). Then, in 1973, he prepared a chronological series of Jazz History articles for Jazz & Blues (the renamed Jazz Monthly), but it closed the month before the series was due to start. Undaunted, he switched to a new magazine, Into Jazz, for which he wrote a key appraisal of Duke Ellington, Pianist, to mark the great man’s death, but this was not enough to save yet another jazz periodical from sudden demise.

And so it was that, in 1975, he enrolled with Britain’s oldest jazz magazine, Jazz Journal, where he wrote features, reviewed records and edited the magazine’s famous discographical column, "Jazz Information" until leaving JJ in 1990. A couple of years with Jazz, the magazine followed…then a hiatus after it, too, closed!

During this period, Sheridan had moved to broadcasting journalism, working first for the BBC, then ITN, editing the lunchtime national network news programme for a time before transferring to documentary-making and winning awards for 17 programmes, including a silver medal and several commendations at the New York Film Festivals of 1992 and 1993. He also wrote jazz articles and reviews for Swing Journal in Japan, Jazz Podium in Germany, Jazz magazine in France, Cadence (30-odd chapters of that jazz history finally got out) and Down Beat, for which he is still a UK Correspondent. He now writes for Jazz Review. This activity has been accompanied by frequent annotation of recordings (compliments for hire, the late Stanley Dance called it) for record companies in the UK, USA, France, Denmark, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands, including Atlantic, Black Saint, Blue Note, Mosaic, Pablo, SteepleChase & Storyville and covering musicians like Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Steve Lacy, Dizzy Gillespie, Von Freeman, Walt Dickerson, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, David Murray and many more.

In 1986, Sheridan established some small reputation as a discographer by following Jazz Records, The Specialist Labels (JazzMedia ApS, Copenhagen, 1981, co-compiled with Ralph Laing) with the publication of his 1400-page Count Basie, A Bio-Discography (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT). Further publications include major contributions to the Grove Music Library's New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz (1988), to the trombonist, Dicky Wells' autobiography Night People (1993) for The Smithsonian Institution and, as of May, 2000, Dis Here, A Bio-Discography Of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley (Greenwood Publishing, Westport, CT). This will be followed later this year by Brilliant Corners, A Bio-Discography of Thelonious Monk (which has been in the making since 1982) and next year, hopefully, by Vibe-rations, A Bio-Discography of Milt Jackson, which has been in preparation since 1994.

When relaxing from jazz archaeology, Sheridan channels his passions into watching his football and cricket teams lose winnable matches, playing competition darts erratically or sitting with friends in the local pub in his 17th century village putting the world to rights.