(Reprinted from the August 2020 issue of Downbeat magazine)
With touring on hold, Joey DeFancesco has been staying put in his Arizona home. This pandemic-induced break from the road is, so far, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for the top-ranked organist; in his 33 years as a professional musician, he hasn’t been home for more than two to three weeks at a time. He’s been anything but idle during the hiatus, however. “I’m well known for my organ playing, but I play other instruments, too,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s nice to dig into them a little more.”
Saying that DeFrancesco is known for his organ playing is like saying that Porsche is known for its cars. DeFrancesco, who has placed [12[SL1] ] times in the Critic’s Poll, started his career as a musically precocious teenager: Before the age of 20 he had toured with trumpeter Miles Davis, recorded three albums for Columbia Records, and placed as a piano finalist in the Thelonious Monk Competition. From these propitious beginnings DeFrancesco would go on to collaborate as a peer with celebrated artists across the musical spectrum—including “jazz soul” organist Jimmy Smith, his mentor—and claim five Grammy nominations as a leader or co-leader.
But DeFrancesco doesn’t just play the organ. He’s earned his bona fides as a trumpeter and vocalist besides, having recorded and performed on these instruments for decades. Furthermore, he insists, he doesn’t just play the Hammond B3 organ. He also plays several other organs that produce the same rich, air-filled sound as the Hammond—like the Legend JdF, the electric organ by Viscount Instruments that bears DeFrancesco’s name.
Of late, too, DeFrancesco has taken up the tenor saxophone, an interest that arose while working on last year’s release, In The Key Of The Universe (Mack Avenue). He’d been spending some time with the album’s guest artist, Pharoah Sanders, and was inspired, listening to the sax legend’s incandescent reed lines. “I thought [the sax] was going to be something to have fun with, that I wouldn’t take too seriously,” he remembers. “But then I got really serious about it. And now I feel as strongly about it as any of the other instruments.”
For DeFrancesco, the wind instruments he plays aren’t that far a remove from the organ. As a keyboardist, he tends to focus on lissome, single-line runs, the way horn players do. And as an improviser, he ventures across a capacious harmonic expanse, something he learned from listening to John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. What changes from one instrument to the other is simply the tonal elements that he gets to work with. “The ideas come from a certain place, but you can do different things with each instrument,” he said.
World-class percussionist Sammy Figueroa, who first recorded with DeFrancesco almost 30 years ago, rejoined him in the studio for In The Key Of The Universe. He noted recently that DeFrancesco’s ability to synthesize musical elements from different eras and contexts brought “the sheer, natural beauty of a true artist” to the album.
For instance, on the title cut, DeFrancesco’s playing recalls the thrill of Smith’s dark, bluesy left-handed bass lines, grounding them in drummer Billy Hart’s pressing shuffle and offsetting the sprawling contours of Sanders’ improvisations. But on tunes like “A Path Through The Noise” and “Inner Being,” DeFrancesco uses Figueroa’s euphonic accentuation and Aussie saxophonist Troy Roberts’ languid musings to stretch into more contemporary feels and fresh harmonic structures. What pulls it all together is not DeFrancesco’s obvious skill in parsing musical influences, however, but his intuitive understanding of how one musical idea can inform another.
“Joey takes all styles and creates his own—the Joey DeFrancesco style,” Figueroa observed. “When you have that artistry, within your physiology, within your spirit, you’re unstoppable. He is probably the greatest organ player alive right now.”
Until touring resumes, DeFrancesco will be at home, practicing his instruments and teaching his self-designed jazz courses to students online. He’s looking forward to two releases this fall, too: For Jimmy, Wes, and Oliver (Mack Avenue), a big band tribute album with DeFrancesco on organ, produced by his high school friend, bassist Christian McBride. And then a new trio album, featuring a second keyboard player. He’s going to have someone else play the organ so that he can have both hands free to play tenor, he explained. As if his impending saxophone recording debut is no big deal.
“I’m just being true to myself, always trying to go to the next level,” he said. “It’s something that you never stop working on.” DB