Remembering Phil Upchurch

Phil Upchurch was a musician's musician. Those who knew, knew. He played on over a thousand recordings, including some of the most iconic popular music ever made including Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, Donny Hathaway Live, Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman," Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, and George Benson's Breezin' to name only a few. He was there in the rooms where the sound of a generation was being created. As my dad, Ben Sidran, tells me in this conversation, "He went from Jimmy Reed to Michael Jackson—that's pretty unusual."

What made Phil so remarkable wasn't just the résumé—impressive as it was. It was his dual identity: a Chicago blues player with the mind of a bebopper. He loved inserting complex harmony into simple forms. He played both guitar and bass with equal authority. He could sit in a studio band and instantly know the right part to play, or step forward and be unmistakably himself.

Producers loved to have him in the studio -Quincy Jones, Tommy LiPuma and Arif Mardin all worked with him repeatedly. He belonged to a generation that didn't just contribute to the sound of popular music—they invented it. And like so many of the greatest studio players, he was easy to overlook unless you knew exactly where to listen. But if you did listen, you could always hear him. Phil had that rare gift: the ability to be unmistakably himself while serving the larger story.

My relationship with Phil is intertwined with my relationship with my father, Ben Sidran. They were friends for over fifty years—recording, touring, sharing life.

Some of my earliest memories of being in a studio involve the two of them together, laughing, experimenting, finding the music in the room. Some of my first gigs as a drummer were with Phil (one of them was even documented for Ben's Live At The Celebrity Lounge album in 1997). He treated me with generosity and seriousness, not because I was "Ben's kid," but because he could see I was serious about the music and he let me know that there was a place for me, the next set of hands that might carry something forward.

It's easy to romanticize mentorship, but the truth is it's how the music survives. It's how names and sounds persist across time. "We all have a time," my dad says in the conversation. "Phil lived a full life. And he represented a truth rather than a fiction."

After Phil's passing, I did what I've done before when a friend left the stage: I called my dad. We talked. We remembered. We tried to fill in the hole left in the fabric. And in doing so, we performed the small sacred act that keeps a musical life alive—we said his name.