By K.D. Norris
ken@wktv.org
In publicity material for Van Morrison’s 2018 all-jazzed up release “You’re Driving Me Crazy” his partner in musical crime is listed at “Hammond hero” Joey DeFrancesco. Maybe the nickname is a little bit of Morrison’s infamous Irish humor and maybe it is simply stating the obvious.
Either way, DeFrancesco and his Hammond heroics will be on full display when St. Cecilia Music Center bring multi-talented, multi-Grammy nominated jazz man and his quartet “The People” to Grand Rapids on Thursday, Feb. 7.
Tickets are still available.
DeFrancesco is a four-time Grammy Award nominee, with more than 30 recordings as a leader under his belt. He has received countless jazz awards including being inducted into the inaugural Hammond B3 Organ Hall of Fame in 2014, as well as being named the top organ player in the Critics Polls in DownBeat Magazine 11 times over the past 15 years and the Readers Polls every year since 2005.
That certainly qualifies as being a “Hammond hero.”
Accompanying DeFrancesco at St. Cecilia will be his group — known as “The People”, and including drummer Michael Ode, guitarist Dan Wilson and saxophonist Troy Roberts. And Joey may well also break out his trumpet and singing voice during the show.
“Joey DeFrancesco and “The People” … is bound to have guests swinging in their seats,” Cathy Holbrook, SCMC executive director, said in supplied material. “Their amazing jazz, blues, soul sound will really speak to the hearts of true jazz lovers and it’s something different then we have featured in the past with Joey on the Hammond B3 Organ.”
DeFrancesco’s latest Grammy nomination was with “The People”, in 2017 for “Project Freedom”, an album that features DeFrancesco on the Hammond B-3 organ, along with contributions on keyboards, trumpet and as a vocalist. “Project Freedom” includes originals by DeFrancesco and covers of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” and John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
DeFrancesco is no stranger to a little genre bouncing, and in 2018 he teamed up with Van Morrison on Morrison’s hard-driving soul-jazz sounding 2018 album titled “You’re Driving Me Crazy”. The album included Morrison, JDeFrancesco, Wilson, Roberts and Ode.
Joey DeFrancesco, in brief
DeFrancesco was raised in Philadelphia where his musical roots in jazz, blues and other musical art forms were born, according to his website bio. The son of “Papa” John DeFrancesco, an organist himself, the younger DeFrancesco remembers playing as early as four-years-old. Soon after, his father began bringing him to gigs in Philadelphia, sitting in with legendary players like Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones.
Some argue that DeFrancesco’s emergence in the 1980s marked the onset of a musical renaissance as organ jazz had all but gone out of vogue from the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s “until DeFrancesco reignited the flame with his vintage Hammond organ and Leslie speaker cabinet.”
DeFrancesco has recorded and toured with his own groups as well as musical whose who names such as Ray Charles, Diana Krall, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, James Moody, John Scofield, Bobby Hutcherson, Jimmy Cobb, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell and David Sanborn.
He currently also hosts a weekly program on SiriusXM Radio’s Real Jazz channel, fittingly called “Organized.”
Tickets for Joey DeFrancesco and “The People” are $35 and $40 and can be purchased by calling St. Cecilia Music Center at 616-459-2224 or visiting the box office at 24 Ransom Ave. NE. Tickets can also be purchased online at scmc-online.org .
A pre-concert reception for $15 begins at 6:30 pm, including wine and hors d’oeuvres, is available by reservation in advance by calling the center. A post-concert party with dessert, coffee and wine is open to all ticket-holders to meet the artists, obtain autographs and CD purchases.
The final St. Cecilia Jazz Series Concert will be on March 7 and will feature rising jazz star singer Veronica Swift and the Benny Green Trio.
For more information on Joey DeFrancesco visit his website; for a video of DeFrancesco and his quartet “The People”, visit here.
