Joey DeFrancesco, revered as king of jazz on Hammond organ, dead at 51

Joey DeFrancesco, a driving force behind bringing the Hammond organ back into jazz music, died Thursday, his wife said on social media. He was 51.

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Gloria DeFrancesco posted news of his death on Friday but did not say when he died and did not give a cause of death, The New York Times reported.

“The love of my life is now in peace with the angels,” she wrote. “Right now I have very few words. Thank you for the outpouring of love and support coming in from everywhere. Joey loved you all.”

Born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, on April 10, 1971, Joey DeFrancesco lived in Arizona for many years. He was signed by Columbia Records when he was 16, The Arizona Republic reported. He released his first album, “All of Me,” the following year and joined jazz great Miles Davis on a five-week European tour, according to the newspaper.

The tour led to DeFrancesco playing keyboards for Davis on his 1989 release, “Amandla.”

He also opened for Bobby McFerrin and Grover Washington Jr., the Times reported.

A 2004 album of original music was called “Joey DeFrancesco Plays Sinatra His Way.” His “Never Can Say Goodbye” in 2010 paid tribute to the music of Michael Jackson, the Times reported. He also collaborated on albums with singer Van Morrison, guitarist Danny Gatton and others, according to the newspaper.

DeFrancesco’s father, “Papa” John DeFrancesco, has been playing jazz organ on the Philadelphia jazz scene since the 1950s, NPR reported. His grandfather and namesake, Joseph DeFrancesco, had played saxophone and clarinet during the swing era of the 1930s in upstate New York. His older brother, Johnny, is a blues guitarist, according to NPR.

Joey DeFrancesco began receiving rave reviews as a teenager.

“(Joey) DeFrancesco -- whose infectious, imp-of-the-perverse expressions make him as much fun to watch as listen to -- can stride, flatten fifths and string together quotes from Bird, Diz, Monk and Miles with the polished resourcefulness of the eight-year veteran that he is,” Gene Seymour of The Philadelphia Daily News wrote in 1986 after observing the Settlement Jazz Ensemble in Philadelphia. “And all the while you watch and listen, you find a little voice inside yourself chanting: ‘He’s 15 years old!’”

DeFrancesco could also play the trumpet, saxophone, piano and synthesizer. But he built his career playing an old-school Hammond B3 organ, the Times reported.

“I love the synthesizers and play all that stuff, but you can’t beat the sound of the B3,” he told The Associated Press in 1991. “The instrument has a very warm tone. It’s got the contrasts. It just has all those emotions in it. It’s got little bits of every instrument in it. It’s like having a whole orchestra at your fingertips.”

Joel Goldenthal, the executive director at The Nash Jazz Club in downtown Phoenix where DeFrancesco often played, said there was “just no way to wrap your head around this loss.”

“He was such a magnificent human being. He was just incomparable,” Goldenthal told the Republic. “But that’s too mild a word. There never was before and never will again be anybody as accomplished as he was on any instrument.”

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