Madison BookBeat

About Madison BookBeat

Madison BookBeat highlights local Wisconsin authors and authors coming to Madison for book events. It airs every Monday afternoon at 1pm on WORT FM.

Publisher

Stu Levitan, Andrew Thomas, Sara Batkie, David Ahrens, Lisa Malawski

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 Oct 2022

Latest episode

21 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

117 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Sept 2026

   Ben Sidran, "Cool Cat Blues: The Life and Times of Georgie Fame"

   Stu Levitan welcomes Madison’s musical Renaissance man Ben Sidran, making his fourth appearance on Madison BookBeat, to talk about his new book Cool Cat Blues: The Life and Times of Georgie Fame (Equinox). And what a life and what times, a musical career with commercial and creative success from 1958 to 2022. Touring pianist and singer with rock and roll legends Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent at 16. Leading one of the leading British R&B group of the early sixties, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames  -- the only UK band to tour with the Motown Revue in 1965. Being the only artist to twice knock the Beatles out of the top spot on the UK music charts, with the Blue Flames and as a solo pop singer. He financed the hip Bag O’Nails Club in Soho, where Paul and Linda McCartney met at one of his gigs  and where Jimi Hendrix gave his first official London performance, featuring the drummer, Mitch Mitchell, whom Fame had recently fired.  Then he became a respected jazz singer and songwriter. In the 1990s, charter membership in former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings and an intense ten-years as touring musical director for Van Morrison. A big band singer so popular in Scandinavia he lived for a while in Sweden, he also toured regularly in Australia with the Aussie Flames. A discography that encompasses  14 live albums, 50 singles and 34 studio albums – including three on the Go Jazz Records label. Plus scandal and tragedy both arising from the British noblewoman Nicollete Marchioness of Londonderry, whom he married in 1972 after she bore his child while married to the Marquis of Londonderry, and who jumped off a bridge to her death 21 years later.  Quite a life for the man born Clive Powell in late June, 1943 in northwest England, Lancashire county, a land of coal mines and textile mills. And holiday camp singing contests that can send a 16-year-old apprentice cotton weaver into musical history. There’s no one better to tell Georgie Fame’s story than his friend and colleague, Madison’s own, Ben Sidran. He’s performed and recorded with Georgie, traveled with him, signed him to his Go Jazz Records label and produced three albums. To list all of Ben’s accomplishments would occupy the entire show, so I’ll just note this appearance on Madison BookBeat, follows episodes on his books The Ballad of Tommy LiPuma, about the colorful and successful  music producer; There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream, about those three things, and his memoir A Life in the Music. As George Wein, the legendary founder of the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival once told me, “Now Ben Sidran – he writes real books.” It is always a pleasure to see, and a special pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, our friend Ben Sidran.

2. 

   14 Sept 2026

   Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff, "Walt Whitman's American Dream"

   Stu Levitan welcomes playwright Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff for a conversation about her new play, "Walt Whitman's American Dream," a featured presentation at the Capital Times Idea Fest on September 19. Presenting Whitman's life and poetry in the context of his time -- born while the Founders were still alive, he mourned Lincoln and died on the cusp of the Gilded Age --  the play invites audiences to reflect on what it means to be an American, and whether a divided people can reconnect.  And there's a good dose of Whitman's own words -- free and rhythmic, democratic and vast, sensual and erotic. (Thank you, Public Domain.) Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaff is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, NY Times and other national media, focusing on parenting, education and health. A graduate of Northwestern University with an MFA in Acting from the University of Alabama, she also has a certificate in television news production, which she put to use as an assistant producer at the CBS News magazine 48 hours. She has also created and taught a series of courses on Shakespeare for older adults and been the managing editor for the leading provider of online cognitive assessments. She is the granddaughter of the late executive editor of the Capital Times Elliott Maraniss and Mary Maraniss, an editor at the University of Wisconsin Press, and the daughter of two-time Pulitzer Prize journalist/historian/biographer David Maraniss and his wife Linda.  Sarah's brother Andrew has also been a guest on Madison BookBeat, discussing his books on sports and society. "Walt Whitman's American Dream" is her third play. There will be a stage reading with soundscape of "Walt Whitman’s American Dream" at 5 PM on September 19 in the Memorial Union Play Circle on the UW campus. Registration for the free event is through captimesideafest.com.

3. 

   7 Sept 2026

   Chloe Benjamin on writing into the unknown

   On this episode of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie talks with author Chloe Benjamin (https://www.chloebenjaminbooks.com/) about her new novel, Understory (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/723843/under-story-a-gma-book-club-pick-by-chloe-benjamin/). At the end of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career, a husband, and a family. But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won’t be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time? The book is now available from Putnam. Chloe Benjamin is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband and two Maine Coon cats in the San Francisco Bay Area. Chloe will be appearing at the Central Branch of the Madison Public Library on Wednesday, September 9th.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

83

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

68

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.