Blue Notes: Ben Sidran

Is it possible to be 69 and still hip?

In a jazz sense, probably yes. The term would certainly have been apposite for Duke Ellington and Count Basie at that age.

Miles Davis only made it to 65, and his latter-day penchant for outlandish costumes from Japanese designers probably weakens his claim, but Ben Sidran, for one, reckons you can get old stylishly playing the music.

"A lot of people think of hipsters now as young cats with small hats, but the hipster is an image that goes back all the way to Prohibition, when people carried flasks in their hip pockets. Hipsters were basically people who dug jazz, dug the nightlife, and I consider myself one of them," Sidran says.

"It's funny to see some of my compatriots who were in the pop music field get older and struggle with being on the 'back nine', and who they are supposed to be, and what they are supposed to do. When you are in the jazz life, of course, you just get better and things get more interesting. The real payoff for the hipster comes way down the line."

The "back nine", for those unfamiliar with the phrase, refers to the second half of a game of golf, and Sidran describes his latest album, which opens with a song going by that title, as "12 original compositions kind of about what it's like to be on the 'back nine' of life now".