Joey DeFrancesco's Official Website
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It's as though DeFrancesco was born to play the organ. His father, "Papa John" DeFrancesco has gigged steadily on the Hammond B-3 around Philadelphia and its immediate environs since the '60s. "I started playing when I was 4," he recalls. "I could just play. I was already hearing Jimmy Smith and stuff like that around the house, then one time my Dad brought the organ home from the gig, and when I heard that sound I really got into it. He guided me in the right direction, the dos and the don'ts, but he was never very forceful about it." By high school DeFrancesco was working steadily around Philadelphia, receiving first-hand instruction from the top-shelf organists who populated and came through the City of Brotherly Love, such as Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, and numerous others.
"I love Jimmy Smith; to this day he's the king. The Blue Note records he did in the late '50s are very innovative; he was doing things that Coltrane did five-six years later. He's a great hardbop single-note player with impeccable technique, but blues-drenched with an amazing groove. He's all-around great!"
You could appropriate DeFrancesco's description of Jimmy Smith to describe his style. He swings ferociously, executes spot-on single-note lines and imaginative bass lines underneath them, can dig deep into the pocket or float over the time. He's told his story with equal comfort in a panoramic range of idioms -- power postbop, on-the-one bebop, abstract reharmonizations, funk that travels the spaceways and soul jazz of the pork chops-and-pasta variety. His high-visibility career kicked off when Miles Davis asked the 17-year-old organ wunderkind to join his late '80s band (he appears on Amandla and Live Round The World). Then he signed a contract with Columbia that resulted in five varied records from 1989 to 1994. He's worked extensively during the '90s with legendary guitarist John McLaughlin (see After The Rain and The Free Spirits [Verve]), and been a sideman in bands led by guitarists Dave Stryker, Randy Johnston, Jimmy Bruno, Danny Gatton and Paul Bollenbeck, his band guitarist for many years.
f/ Alex Ligertwood (Santana) & Larry Bragg (Tower of Power)
with special guest
George Whitty
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This show is 21+, with proper ID. Tickets are $20 in advance. Doors at 7pm.
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