André "Dédé" Ceccarelli is a French jazz drummer, born in Nice on January 5, 1946. He learned the instrument from his father, who had played drums in the orchestra of the Casino of the Sporting Club de Monaco, in the band led by Aimé Barelli. At fifteen he was playing weekend tea dances in the salons of the Hôtel Royal on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. A talent scout noticed him there and sent him to the rock group Les Chats Sauvages, who needed a new drummer; he was hired in May 1962, at sixteen. He stayed almost two years, touring and recording with the band, and left in January 1964.

He went back to the Monaco casino orchestra, where his father's chair had been, and then worked in studios and on tour for variety singers, among them Claude François, before turning to jazz, which he had always wanted to play. From the late 1960s he worked with the arranger and trumpeter Ivan Jullien, and Discogs credits him on Jullien's big band records Secret Service (1972) and Blow! (1977). In 1972 he joined the short-lived group Troc with the bassist Jannick Top and the singer Alex Ligertwood; its self-titled album is dated 1973 on Discogs. In 1974 he played in the orchestra of Jean-Claude Naude and took part in its album A New Kind of Band, and in 1975 he was one of the four members of CCPP (Ceccarelli, Chantereau, Padovan, Pezin), whose album came out on Flamophone. His first records under his own name were Rythmes (Music De Wolfe, 1976) and the fusion album Ceccarelli (Carla, 1977). AllMusic says the two early solo records, Ceccarelli and André Ceccarelli (JMS, 1981), made him one of the most promising young musicians in European jazz, with players such as the violinist Didier Lockwood, Jannick Top, Christian Escoudé, François Jeanneau and Ligertwood joining him.

In 1979 he began working in the United States with the bassist Bunny Brunel and Chick Corea, and he was a member of Bad News Travels Fast, a band that included the brothers Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker and recorded two albums, Look Out and Ordinary Man. In 1987 he met the singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, and he has been her drummer ever since; Discogs lists him on her records from Live in Paris (1987) to Dear Ella (1997) and beyond. English Wikipedia lists him among the players he has worked with: Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Sting, Enrico Rava, Kenny Wheeler, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Jean-Luc Ponty, Stéphane Grappelli, Didier Lockwood, Chick Corea, Joey DeFrancesco, John McLaughlin, Biréli Lagrène, Christian Escoudé, Philippe Catherine, Nguyên Lê and Sylvain Luc. Discogs also credits him on records by Michel Legrand and Martial Solal's big band, and on the Orchestre National de Jazz album O.N.J. 87 under Antoine Hervé.

His own trio of the early 1990s, with the keyboardist Thierry Eliez and the bassist Jean-Marc Jafet, made Hat Snatcher (Phonogram, 1992), which won the Victoire du jazz for instrumental jazz album of the year in 1993, and 3 Around the 4 (Verve, 1994), an album of Beatles songs recorded on March 7 to 9, 1994. From the Heart (Verve, recorded in September 1995 at Studio Ferber in Paris) has Sylvain Beuf on saxophones, Jean-Michel Pilc and Bernard Arcadio on piano, Thomas Bramerie and Rémi Vignolo on bass, the Malian singers Maryam Diabaté and Oumou Kouyaté on "Moussolou" and Dee Dee Bridgewater on the closing track. His quartet with Antonio Faraò on piano, Sylvain Beuf on saxophones and Rémi Vignolo on bass recorded West Side Story (BMG, September 1997), with Richard Galliano and Biréli Lagrène as guests and Bridgewater narrating one track, and then 61:32 (BMG France, 1999). In 1998 the French copyright society Sacem gave him its Grand Prix du jazz for his career. In 2000 he founded Trio Sud with the guitarist Sylvain Luc and Jean-Marc Jafet.

Carte Blanche (Dreyfus Jazz, 2004) is a two-disc set on which he invited a long line of guests: Richard Galliano, Stefano Di Battista, Biréli Lagrène, John McLaughlin, Sylvain Luc, Didier Lockwood, Enrico Pieranunzi, Baptiste Trotignon, Laurent de Wilde, Flavio Boltro and Eric Legnini. Avenue des Diables Blues (Dreyfus, 2005) is a trio record with Biréli Lagrène as guest. Later records include Golden Land (CAM Jazz, 2007), Sweet People (CAM Jazz, 2009), with Julian Oliver Mazzariello and Sylvain Beuf, and Le Coq et la Pendule (Plus Loin Music, 2009), a tribute to the singer Claude Nougaro with the bassist Diego Imbert, the pianist Pierre-Alain Goualch and the singer David Linx, recorded on February 11 to 13, 2009 in Antibes. The Victoires du jazz gave him a Victoire d'honneur in 2011. That November he re-formed Troc with Jannick Top, Alex Ligertwood, Eric Legnini and the guitarist Claude Engel.

For his fifty years in music he released Ultimo (2012), a record of songs with a classical orchestra arranged and conducted by Pierre Bertrand and with his son Régis Ceccarelli singing, which he said closed his career as a leader. He has gone on recording in co-led and named groups since: Twelve Years Ago (Bonsaï Music, 2013), Twenty 20 (Bonsaï Music, 2014) with Jean-Michel Pilc and Thomas Bramerie, trio records with Enrico Pieranunzi and Diego Imbert (Ménage à trois, 2016, Monsieur Claude, 2018, and Fauréver, 2024), and the quartet ASTA with Antonio Faraò, Sylvain Beuf and Thomas Bramerie (Passers of Time, 2019, and Asta 2, 2023). With Pierre-Alain Goualch and Diego Imbert he made Porgy & Bess (Trebim Music, recorded in December 2020 and released on November 12, 2021) and Le Jazz et la Java (Trebim Music, released on August 23, 2024, with David Linx singing).

Away from the kit he is the official patron of the festival Jazz à toute heure, founded in 1998 at Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, where he plays in trio every year, and he was patron of the Nice Jazz Festival in 2013. In 2016 he took part in the online drum lessons of the Imusic-school, with Franck Agulhon. He turned 80 on January 5, 2026. A new live version of West Side Story, recorded at the Paris club Le Baiser Salé, came out on Apple Music on October 2, 2026, and event listings announce release concerts at the club on November 27 and 28, 2026.

No interview in which he names his influences was found, so this section follows what his career and records show. He learned from his father, grew up playing hotel tea dances and a casino orchestra, and reached jazz through years of studio and touring work, and the range shows: a rock group at sixteen, a 1970s fusion band, American fusion sessions with Brunel, the Breckers and Corea, and, in his later records, mostly the post-bop trio and quartet setting. His own albums often reuse a favourite piece of repertoire as a vehicle, whether the Beatles on 3 Around the 4, Bernstein on West Side Story, Gershwin on Porgy & Bess, Claude Nougaro on Le Coq et la Pendule or Serge Gainsbourg on a 2001 trio record with Pierre-Alain Goualch and Rémi Vignolo. He tends to work for years with the same partners, among them Sylvain Beuf, Thomas Bramerie, Diego Imbert, Pierre-Alain Goualch, Antonio Faraò and Enrico Pieranunzi. MusicBrainz tags him as jazz and post-bop, and the Sacem prize of 1998 and the Victoires du jazz of 1993 and 2011 mark the recognition he has received in France.