Jazz Flashes Podcast: Drummer and Jazz Journalist Steven Cerra

Steven Cerra (Photo: Melody Cerra)

Any jazz fan who follows blogs currently published about the genre is surely acquainted with Steven Cerra's Jazz Profiles and the very informative, in-depth articles about jazz musicians that he offers there. The length and thoroughness of the posts, some of which comprise in excess of 100 pages of written text, make this blog unique and one of the most interesting on the internet. Rather than giving an overview of a style or of the history of jazz, Mr. Cerra is interested in focusing on individual performers, many of whom are rather obscure and not written about very often. This is a feature that has always attracted me to his blog, and for a while I've been wanting to interview him for an episode of the Jazz Flashes Podcast. That came together a couple of months ago, when he joined me for a chat from his home in Southern California, and you may hear the episode at the end of this brief post. As a drummer, Mr. Cerra was there during the heyday of West Coast jazz, in the 1950s and '60s, and throughout our conversation he reminisces about the West Coast scene and speaks fondly of musicians he knew personally, such as vibraphonist-pianist Victor Feldman or ace drummer Shelly Manne. He also elaborates on the rationale for the writing of his blog posts and speaks passionately about the past, the present, and the future of jazz. It was a pleasure for me to have Mr. Cerra as a guest on the podcast, and it's my hope that all readers of Jazz Flashes will find this episode interesting and engaging.