The thing I thought most when listening to the last of Joey DeFrancesco recorded at Baltimore jazz club the Keystone Korner in America on 12-14 August 2022 was what a loss.
He was only 51 when the organist who also plays trumpet on ‘Free’ and sax on ‘Lady G’ (the tune written for his wife Gloria who produces this album) died a few weeks later.
A first posthumous release and JDeF’s final known recording as a bandleader.
It’s really very good. Accompanied by guitarist and organist Lucas Brown and drummer Anwar Marshall, there’s so much flow. Simple as that. Swim in this great sound and feel the warmth all over your body.
Tunes are his own including material associated with his final two studio albums, In the Key of the Universe (2019 – eg ‘Inner Being,’ ‘Awake and Blissed,’ ‘Vibrations in Blue’) and More Music (2021 eg ‘Free,’ ‘Lady G,’ ‘Just Beyond the Horizon,’ ‘In Times of Reflection,’ ‘Roll With It.’
A defining figure in the revival of the Hammond organ in modern jazz, DeFrancesco began his recording career as a teenager and toured with Miles Davis at 17.
Hear the Philadelphian on ‘Cobra’ from Miles’ Amandla where he plays additional keys with George Duke on the Mothers of Invention luminary’s own tune.
The Hammond B-3 player’s subsequent career encompassed more than 30 albums as a leader, alongside collaborations with artists including John McLaughlin and some terrific albums with Van Morrison – some of Van’s core jazz themed albums in fact.
The only time I ever saw Joey live was when he was with McLaughlin at a concert given in the Royal Festival Hall, London in the 1990s circa Tokyo Live. Later I saw Jimmy Smith live one time at the Hammersmith Palais. Joey, son of Papa John a top organist himself who died in his eighties in 2024, was one of the few B-3 players you could place in all sanity in the same sentence as The Cat from Norristown some 15 miles from Philly where Jimmy Smith was born in 1928 and who was more than 40 years Joey’s senior.
This is a great memory of a classy supper club live sound to own and goes straight into my top selections of albums released in 2026. The full list is here. It’s far more than a “document”. Because it’s as vivid as the brightest blue sky itself and though I have never been to the Keystone Korner and probably never will makes me feel there right in the middle of it all. A kid can dream, eh – and definitely the dreams of the players conjured here hard wired into Joey’s tunes that time 4 years ago live on.
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