Meeting up with French jazz great André Ceccarelli, there’s no need to address him as "Monsieur" Ceccarelli or even "André." He’s simply "Dédé" to everyone, both inside the jazz world and out. In fact, the veteran drummer is so well-known he needs little introduction here. But that would be depriving ourselves of the pleasure of looking back over forty-something years - and giving you an instructive lesson in jazz history in the process! For "Dédé", now in his early sixties, remains a reference and a role model for a host of young musicians today.

André Ceccarelli’s career has been driven by conviction and an all-consuming passion, a passion he inherited at an early age. "I come from a family of musicians," he explains, "My father was a drummer and it just so happens my son is, as well. I’ve got the music in me, as they say!" In his teens, the young André did turn his back on music for a while, working as a motor mechanic. But his love of music won out over oil and engines in the end.

At 16, André left his hometown of Nice, in the south of France, and headed up to Paris, to the streets of the buzzing capital where anything was possible – especially in the early ‘60s when France was undergoing a major economic boom. The leisure industry was no longer the preserve of the rich and dance orchestras were springing up all over the place, from dance halls and television studios to street corners. "There was definitely no feeling of insecurity when it came to employment," Ceccarelli laughs, "If you wanted to be a musician and make a living from your music, you could! Times have obviously changed since!"

One of Dédé’s major regrets these days, it seems, is that concerns about musicians’ employment status have become more important than music itself. The veteran drummer recounts how when he organises master classes, young up-and-coming musicians looking to take up a professional career frequently bombard him with questions about how they can claim benefit payments from the state if they find themselves out of work. "It shouldn’t be an issue whether you can claim the dole or not," Dédé laments, "When you play music, you play music and that’s that. It’s a gift!"

Dédé has certainly treated his own musical talent as a gift from above to be shared down here below. But the early days of his career show that making a living from jazz was not always an easy business. "When I first started out," he admits, "I did do a lot of mainstream pop stuff with Les Chats Sauvages, Dick Rivers’ famous group who churned out all those hits." In fact, Dédé spent fifteen years accompanying groups from all sectors of the musical spectrum. "Yes, I did a lot of twist and yéyé," he quips, "because that’s what was in fashion back then." Asked whether he has good memories of those early years even so, Dédé sagely replies, "Yes, because I learnt how to make an effort. But it was obviously difficult to assume from an artistic point of view." And saying this, he makes an almost imperceptible grimace.

Persevering with his dream of devoting himself exclusively to jazz one day, Dédé experienced a glimpse of light at the end of his tunnel every now and then. "I used to rehearse with bands in studios that were also used by Daniel Humair’s trio. And, on several occasions, Humair let me play with his musicians, the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and the organist Eddy Louiss. It was amazing! A real boost for the morale!"

Perhaps it was these early unhoped-for encounters that formed Ceccarelli’s vision of jazz as a music based on collective collaboration, a vision his latest album, Golden Land, very much defends. "Music is a team sport," he declares with conviction, "I love communal life, being with other people. I love getting everyone together around me..." In fact, Ceccarelli admits he has a problem spending too much time alone. "I once spent a fortnight on my own and by the end of it l really thought I was going mad!"

Ceccarelli's new album, Golden Land, is nothing if not a tribute to team sport, bringing the ‘crème de la crème’ of the old and the new generation together. Longstanding music friends such as the Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi and the double-bass player Hein van de Geyn, with whom Ceccarelli played in Dee Dee Bridgewater’s quartet, represent the former.

Meanwhile, the hottest rising stars of the French jazz scene - singer Elizabeth Kontomanou and saxophonist David el-Malek – symbolise the arrival of the new guard. "Elizabeth and David are both musicians I admire,” says Dédé, "And for me this album is primarily about bonding on a human level before bonding on a musical one."

Golden Land, which was recorded in just two days without any rehearsals beforehand, is 100% raw and unadorned. "The album includes two totally improvised pieces Free Three and Maybe Sunday Night. Listeners basically have to take us as they find us on this’album," laughs Dédé, "What’s important to me is the musicality of a piece, the intelligence of the sounds we manage to produce with our respective instruments. It’s about collective sublimeness, spurring one another on to greater things."

One might wonder whether such a quest for musicality and spontaneity at the cost of all else contributes towards the notion of jazz being a “music for intellectuals", a sound only appreciated by the listening elite? Dédé, who has worked with the likes of Michel Legrand and Ennio Morricone in the course of his career, acknowledges that jazz is "difficult". But for him that’s just how it should be! "Jazz should keep on making people dream. It should remain inaccessible," he declares, "That means it will never be in fashion - and it can never go out of fashion, either!"

Ceccarelli proclaims that he remains profoundly optimistic about the future of jazz, but rails against certain practices that have, he claims, denatured the genre. "I don’t think it was logical for (electro star) St Germain to win a Victoire de la Musique award in the jazz category. And it’s the same problem with the Nice Jazz Festival these days - you get anything and everything in the line-up now!"

Patron of a number of music festivals who also sits on the board of directors of the French copyright association ADAMI, Ceccarelli has lost none of his energy or commitment. His dream, he confides, would be to set up a blow-the-audience-away big band like Count Basie’s or Dizzy Gillespie’s in the olden days. "But it’s a costly enterprise!” In the meantime, Dédé continues to serve the jazz cause in his own humble way. The self-confessed sound bulimic is currently getting ready to appear at the Paris Jazz Big Band festival. And while preparing a summer tour with Biréli Lagrène and Sarah Lazarus’s Gipsy Project he also has plans to record a new album this autumn. But despite this whirlwind activity, Dédé remains impressively calm and serene.

Finishing up his coffee, he glances at a poster advertising an art magazine proposing the latest art-as-investment schemes. "Ridiculous", he scoffs, giving me one of his firm handshakes, before walking off with his hands stuffed in his pockets. "Off to see my grandson," he calls back over his shoulder. A future Ceccarelli drummer in the making, we wonder?