World renowned jazz pianist and raconteur Ben Sidran will play the Dakota Jazz Club for two nights at the end of April
By MORDECAI SPECKTOR
Although great African-American artists predominate and stand as exemplars in jazz music, Jews also have made their mark. In the century past, jazz was one of the performing arts where emerging minorities could break through. So, from Benny Goodman to Artie Shaw to Stan Getz to a host of contemporary players, Jews too have established themselves on the jazz scene.
And jazz aficionados know Ben Sidran, who has been playing and recording for more than 35 years. Music lovers also remember the Madison, Wisconsin-based pianist from his stint long ago playing with the Steve Miller Band (he and Miller share a songwriting credit on the hit “Space Cowboy”).
Still playing joints and telling stories about music, Sidran, 66, will head up to Minnesota later this month. He is booked for shows on April 26-27 at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis. During an interview with the Jewish World last week, Sidran, a native of Racine, Wisc., talked about his life in the music world, his recent recordings, and covering tunes by Minnesota’s renowned singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
Sidran likely will play some songs from his most recent album, Cien Noches (Nardis Music), which was recorded at the Café Central in Madrid, Spain. The CD features Sidran on the Hammond B3 organ, backed by his son, Leo, on drums; guitarist Louka Patenaude, who’s also from Madison; saxophonist Bob Rockwell, a player known to Twin Cities jazz fans; and a couple of special guests.
Ben Sidran: You just don’t go lightly into Bob Dylan’s music… you really have to have a good excuse to do it. (Photo: Courtesy of Ben Sidran)
For his upcoming gig at the Dakota, Sidran will be playing piano, along with bassist Billy Peterson and drummer Gordy Knudtson. He recalled that he “first started playing with them 35 years ago.” As a producer for Steve Miller some 25 years ago, Sidran put together a band that included Peterson and Knudtson, the nucleus of his own ensemble. They’re still recording and touring with the Steve Miller Band.
“I don’t get to play with these guys as much as I would like to, because they’re out on the rock ’n’ roll tours,” remarked Sidran.
Another member of the renowned local Peterson clan, Ricky Peterson, will play Hammond B3 when Sidran takes the bandstand at the Dakota.
Those attending the show will hear “standards and grooves,” Sidran explained. “I do a lot of talking also — I just get caught up on talking; but I do it with music, so that I don’t bore people.”
Sidran also has done some talking on the radio. Over a five-year period, he interviewed dozens of jazz greats for his National Public Radio program Sidran on Record. A box-set package, Talking Jazz, which includes 60 interviews — on 24 CDs — along with an 80-page booklet, is available from NPR.
In fact, although he downplays his status as “doctor,” Sidran does have a PhD in American studies from Sussex University in Brighton, England. His dissertation on black music and culture was published as Black Talk, in 1971. His entertaining memoir, A Life in the Music, which includes a selection of his tunes on CD, was published in 2003.
And Sidran is working on another book, Jews, Music and the American Dream, which comes out of a course he taught six years ago at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As the university’s artist-in-residence, Sidran lectured on Jewish contributions to jazz, blues and pop music in America — from “Irving Berlin to the Beastie Boys.” After completing his teaching, Sidran spent two more years researching the subject, and he hopes to publish his book sometime in the near future.
(Henry Sapoznik, a noted scholar of klezmer music, is now the interdisciplinary artist-in-residence at Madison, and is teaching a course on “Yiddish-American Popular Culture, 1890-1950.” Sidran will play with Sapoznik and pianist Marilyn Lerner, in a campus concert on April 20, the conclusion of the “KlezKamp Roadshow” events this weekend in Madison.)
Again, there are many notable Jews in the jazz genre these days, but Sidran has been out front in his explorations of Jewish identity and the role of Jews in music. His 1994 album Life’s a Lesson (Go Jazz) featured a stellar cast of Jewish jazz musicians and vocalists (Joshua Redman, Lee Konitz, Gil Goldstein, Carole King, Randy Brecker, et al.) on traditional liturgical tunes, including “Oseh Shalom,” “B’Rosh Hashana” and “Kol Nidre.”
On his latest album, Cien Noches, Sidran covers two songs by one of the world’s most famous Jewish songwriters, Bob Dylan. The CD includes unique arrangements of Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
I ventured that Bob Dylan’s music figured in the course on Jews and American music that he taught at Madison.
“Oh yeah, Bob Dylan’s in the curriculum,” Sidran allowed. “Before I made this organ record, I was going to make a record… of Dylan songs. Because I’ve done performances… kind of talking about his music, not in clubs — I did this at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.”
Sidran explained that the program he created, “Bob Dylan: Hiding in Plain Sight,” is a “discussion of who Bob is — everybody wants to know — and then I play his tunes. It’s a 90-minute show, where I tell jokes and stories… and play his songs.”
(While we were on the topic of the troubadour from Hibbing, I told Sidran about traveling with my late friend Larry Kegan to Durango, Mexico, in 1973, and meeting Dylan, who had a small acting part in Sam Peckinpah’s western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.)
Although he has recorded a couple of dozen albums, Sidran has never covered any Dylan tunes until now. He worked up “eight or nine arrangements,” in preparation for Cien Noches. “You just don’t go lightly into Bob Dylan’s music… you really have to have a good excuse to do it,” he said.
The recent album showcases Sidran’s aforementioned patter and his cool, groove-centric approach; many critics compare his music to that of pianist and singer Mose Allison, who Sidran has worked with, among many other luminaries.
Probing further into the artist’s fascination with the intersection of Jews and jazz, Sidran recalled that he was a seventh grade student in Racine, when “it was the first time I ever ran into any anti-Semitism, where I had kids calling me names. There were no Jews in my school — there were like two or three. It was at this time that I discovered jazz; at the same time, I heard Horace Silver and Bud Powell and Miles Davis.”
Sidran paused and continued, “There was a period where if I opened up a book or a magazine, and either the word ‘Jew’ or ‘jazz’ was anywhere on the page, my eye would go immediately to it. It was weird. And I never saw ‘Jew’ and ‘jazz’ on the same page… so, I was very taken by that and I thought about it a lot.”
On a tangent that relates to the long sad history of musicians getting bilked by record company executives, the only occasion when I met Sidran in person took place six years ago, at the old Fingerhut headquarters in Minnetonka. Sidran and his son Leo were in town to promote an award-winning album of children’s music, El Elefante, which was issued by Liquid 8 Records. We conducted an interview and when I left, Sidran was in the tiny office of Liquid 8’s honcho, Michael Catain.
Last October, Catain pled guilty in St. Paul federal court to a felony count of money-laundering in the notorious Ponzi scheme involving local businessman Tom Petters. According to the Star Tribune, between 2002 and 2008, Catain said he helped run more than $12 billion through a shell company called Enchanted Family Buying Co., at Petters’ direction.
Unfortunately, in addition to investors scam by Petters and his associates, Sidran and other recording artists were taken by Liquid 8 Records. Sidran said that he, as well as Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates fame), the Indigo Girls and Vanilla Ice were “trying to get their records back.”
Regarding his dealings with Catain, Sidran ruefully commented, “He didn’t pay, he didn’t honor the contracts. He’s just a criminal.”
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Ben Sidran will play two shows, at 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 26 and Monday, April 27 at the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis. For details and to buy tickets, go to: www.dakotacooks.com, or call 612-332-1010.
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