Jazz Articles about Ben Sidran

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Ben Sidran At 83: “Entropy Is Inevitable, But The Antidote Is Available”

by Leo Sidran
August 19, 2026

Last week my father, Ben Sidran, turned 83rd, and as I do every year, I talked to him for The Third Story podcast.These annual conversations have become a tradition, a way of tracking our relationship, and an artist, over time.Ben is a jazz musician, producer, writer and broadcaster. He was once described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “a Renaissance man cast adrift in the modern world." This year, I came across a 1974 DownBeat cover story ...

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Ben Sidran at 82: Still auditioning for the role of myself

by Leo Sidran
August 16, 2025

Every year on his birthday, my dad Ben Sidran and I sit down for a conversation. It started when he turned 76, and we've done it ever since--capturing an ongoing record of where his head and heart are at that particular moment. Over the years we've talked about music, memory, politics, travel, the craft of performing, and the art of living. These annual conversations have become a kind of time-lapse portrait: the same two people returning to the ...

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Jesse Ed Davis: Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day: The Unissued Atco Recordings 1970-1971

by Doug Collette
July 9, 2025

Originally reissued in November 2024 as a limited-edition vinyl set, the seventy-four-some minutes of The Unissued Atco Recordings 1970-1971 derives from sessions for Jesse Ed Davis' debut LP Jesse Davis (Atco Records,1971) and its followup of a year later, Ululu (Atco Records, 1972). One of the most unheralded musicians of his time, Jesse Ed Davis' appearance is nevertheless virtually as recognizable as the tone of his guitar: the shock of black hair over his face brings focus to the close ...

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Chop Wood And Carry Water: Ben And Leo Sidran On The Election

by Leo Sidran
November 14, 2024

When everything you thought you knew turns out to be mistaken, when your compatriots let you down, when your neighborhood is on fire and your friends are drowning, when even Quincy Jones decides he's checking out, it helps to have someone to talk to, to help make sense of it all. For me, it's my dad Ben Sidran. Our talks don't really begin or end, they simply continue. This podcast has given me the chance to document some ...

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Ben Sidran: It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing State

by Dean Nardi
October 28, 2024

Beyond Ben Sidran's appreciable talents as an accomplished composer and performer in jazz, blues, ragtime and several other styles, he is also a highly proficient producer (Richie Cole, Phil Upchurch, Lee Konitz, Georgie Fame, Michael Franks, Rickie Lee Jones, Mose Allison), an author, podcaster, radio and television host and a historian. He was part of the early Steve Miller Band with Boz Scaggs and has recorded 35 albums in 50 of the 81 years he has been on the planet. ...

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Ben Sidran: If You Can't Laugh At Life You're Through

by Leo Sidran
May 9, 2024

In a career spanning over fifty years and thirty five records, Ben Sidran has established himself as a philosopher poet. Equally celebrated for his precise, probing writing style as he is for his improvised spoken word jazz raps, he has carved out a truly unique space for himself. The Times of London aptly described Ben as “the world's first existential jazz rapper," and The Chicago Sun Times once referred to him as “a renaissance man cast adrift in the modern ...

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Ben Sidran at 80: This is your life

by Leo Sidran
August 16, 2023