Today is my father Ben Sidran’s 83rd birthday, 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 about Ben, written when he was 30 years old. So I read it back to him to see what resonated, what held up, and what had changed.
As always, the conversation moved easily from the personal to the universal.
I also tracked down the author of the original DownBeat article, Joan Gannij (who happens to be my friend!) and talked to her about what she remembers about writing the piece and meeting with Ben over half a century ago.
Find the full conversation with Ben and Leo Sidran here:
