Jazz West Coast
Jazz West Coast is an ongoing column with original narratives, historical commentaries and interviews about Jazz on the West Coast from 1945 to 1965 including pieces on Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Shelly Manne, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse All-Stars, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck and a host of others key musicians associated with West Coast Jazz.
It will be hosted by Steven A. Cerra, a professional jazz drummer, jazz blogger and the winner of the 2025 Jazz Journalist Association Special Citation for historic writings. The column will also feature the writings of other authors and critics on the subject of Jazz on the West Coast.
Steve is the author of anthologies on Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Jazz West Coast Readers Volumes 1-3, Jazz Drummers Volume 1 and Profiles in Jazz Volume 1. All are self published and are available exclusively through Amazon.
The Case for Dave Pell: The Octets and Beyond
by Steven Cerra
Of the major books on West Coast Jazz, few have much to say about the Dave Pell Octet, a group that was active on a regular basis from 1952--1964 and intermittently thereafter until Dave's death in 2017. Ted Gioia gives Dave's group a casual mention in the following statement from his West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960:"If the later nonet, octets, and dectettes of Dave Pell, Marty Paich, Lennie Niehaus, and others have a West ...
Continue ReadingShorty Rogers And His Giants
by Steven Cerra
Shorty Rogers--trumpet, flugelhorn, arranger--was born on April 14, 1924 and died November 7, 1994. Born Milton Rajonsky, Shorty was the biggest name in West Coast jazz. He studied in New York before going into the army, and on his discharge worked first with Woody Herman's First and Second Herds, and from there in the Stan Kenton band of 1950-51. Besides his own trumpet playing, which was delivered in a bright, almost humorously optimistic yet contrarily low-key style, Rogers's ...
Continue ReadingThe Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950’s from Robert Gordon’s “Jazz West Coast”
by Steven Cerra
Originally published in London in 1986 by Quartet Books LTD, Bob Gordon's seminal work on the jazz styles and groups that developed primarily in Los Angeles in the 1950s has long been out-of-print and copies of it are difficult to obtain. In order to rectify this lack of availability, Bob Gordon has given me permission to represent this work as part of the ongoing Jazz West Coast column. At the outset, it is important to note ...
Continue ReadingThe Jazz West Coast Style of Music: An Introduction
by Steven Cerra
I know it's hard to imagine with today's governmental overreach telling people what cars to drive, what bathrooms to use, and the highest personal, property and commercial taxes of any state in the nation, but California in the 1950s was a place of opportunities and possibilities. It's why my dad relocated the family from New England in the closing years of that decade and as a budding Jazz musician, I took full advantage of it. But ...
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