On Twitter and Facebook, people are talking about the death of American musician Joey Defrancesco, who played many instruments. He died suddenly because of things that were out of his control, and jazz fans couldn’t stop thinking about how much he had done for the genre.
American jazz musician DeFrancesco played the organ, trumpet, saxophone, and sometimes sang. At the beginning of his career, he played on many recordings with well-known musicians like Miles Davis, Houston Person, and John McLaughlin. Since then, he has put out more than 30 albums on his own.
Joey Defrancesco on Losing Weight and Being Sick
Joey Defrancesco’s death has been linked to the fact that he lost weight and had problems with how his body measured. It was said that his body and health had been getting worse and worse for a very long time.
The jazz musician died at his home on August 25, 2022. But some reports say that the person who died had been dealing with fatal health problems for a long time. This caused his health to keep getting worse and hurt vital organs that are needed to live.
Because of this, he was taken care of by the medical team for a very long time. However, he died, which left almost everyone in a deep state of shock.
DeFrancesco was born on April 10, 1971, in Springfield, Pennsylvania, which is near Philadelphia. His grandfather, Joe DeFrancesco, was a multi-instrumentalist who played with the Dorsey Brothers. His father, Papa John DeFrancesco, was also a jazz organist from the Philadelphia area.
When he was four, he started playing the piano, but he quickly switched to his father’s Hammond B-3 because he liked the way it sounded better than the synthesizers of the time, which had taken the piano’s place as the most popular instrument.
Around the age of six, he started joining his father at his club gigs. By the time he was ten, he was getting paid to play on the weekends and filling in for musicians like Groove Holmes and Jack McDuff.
What happened to the musician’s health? How did he die?
Joey Defrancesco had been dealing with serious health problems for a long time, which caused his health to slowly get worse and hurt vital organs that he needed to stay alive.
Even though he was being looked at by doctors for a long time, he had to die, which shocked almost everyone.
His family hasn’t said anything about his death yet. He asks his followers to give them privacy during this tough time because they can’t talk to other people and are still in shock over the death of a close family member.
DeFrancesco’s music has everything from soul-jazz and bluesy rhythms in the style of Jimmy Smith to hard bop and the sophisticated modal style of Larry Young, a student of John Coltrane. He was a big reason why the Hammond B-3 organ came back into jazz music in the 1970s and 1980s.
He has worked with many different musicians, such as Miles Davis, Larry Coryell, Benny Golson, George Benson, and many more. Several of his albums, like Enjoy the View (2014) and Project Freedom, have earned him Grammy nominations (2017).
DeFrancesco has put out more than 30 albums under his own name and is in high demand as both a sideman and a soloist.
How I grew up and went to school
Joey DeFrancesco was born in the Pennsylvania town of Springfield in the year 1971.
He was born into a family of jazz musicians that went back three generations. He was named after his jazz musician grandfather, Joseph DeFrancesco, who played the clarinet and saxophone. His father, “Papa” John DeFrancesco, was an organist who played all over the country and won the Living Legend Award from the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 2013. DeFrancesco started playing the organ when he was 4, and by the time he was 5, he could play Jimmy Smith songs note for note. At age 5, his father John started taking him to shows and letting him sit in on sets. At age 10, DeFrancesco joined a band in Philadelphia. Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones, both jazz musicians, were in the band. He was a regular at jazz clubs in the area and opened for Wynton Marsalis and B.B. King.
Joey DeFrancesco went to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts in Philadelphia. He learned to play the piano and organ there. DeFrancesco won a lot of awards in high school, including the Philadelphia Jazz Society McCoy Tyner Scholarship. In the first Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, he made it to the final round.
Career
Joey DeFrancesco was 16 years old when he signed a contract with Columbia Records to be their only artist. The next year, he put out his first record, which was called “All of Me.” People say that his work on “All of Me” helped bring the organ back into jazz music in the 1980s. In the same year, DeFrancesco went on a five-week concert tour in Europe with Miles Davis and his band. He then played keyboards on Miles Davis’s album Amandla, which went to the top of the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart in 1989. Around the same time, DeFrancesco began to play the trumpet after hearing Davis play. Davis first noticed DeFrancesco when he was on a performance on the TV show Time Out. He and his high school classmate Christian McBride were playing on the set when Davis asked the show’s host, “What’s the name of your organ player?” He was talking about DeFrancesco. As part of his recording deal with Columbia, DeFrancesco had five albums put out. In addition to All of Me, he put out Where Were You in 1990, Part III in 1991, Reboppin in 1992, and Live at the 5 Spot in 1993.
At age 18, DeFrancesco went on tour with his own quartet. In the early 1990s, he started working with John McLaughlin, the leader of Mahavishnu Orchestra and the guitarist for Miles Davis. At the age of 22, he joined McLaughlin and drummer Dennis Chambers to start the band The Free Spirits. He went on tour with the group for four years and was on a number of albums, such as Tokyo Live and After the Rain. The Tokyo Live album also says that DeFrancesco played trumpet on it.
In 2010, Joey DeFrancesco played in Rotterdam at the North Sea Jazz Festival
The album Incredible! was made by DeFrancesco in 1999. At the San Francisco Jazz Festival, they played live. Jimmy Smith, who was his idol, played with DeFrancesco on two songs from the album. In 2004, DeFrancesco made the album Legacy, which also had Jimmy Smith on it. Smith died the same year as the album’s release.
In 2004, DeFrancesco’s album Falling in Love Again was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2009, when Amy Adams and Alec Newman starred in the movie Moonlight Serenade, DeFrancesco’s career took a slight turn. He played “Frank D” in the movie and was also listed as the film’s composer and producer. DeFrancesco was nominated for another Grammy Award in 2011 for Never Can Say Goodbye: The Music of Michael Jackson. This album was up for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. [4] As a way to honor Michael Jackson, the recording came out in 2010. One of Joey DeFrancesco’s other tribute albums is called “Joey DeFrancesco plays Sinatra his way,” and it is a tribute to Frank Sinatra. DeFrancesco also turned 40 in 2011. He celebrated by putting out his 29th album, called “40,” which did well on jazz charts in both the United States and Europe.
Style of music
People said that DeFrancesco’s music had a “swinging Philly sound” that he “improvised and added to with his own ferocity.” During his career, he played more than 200 nights a year, but as of 2013, he stopped doing that. JazzTimes called him the best B3 player on the planet and gave him a lot of other praise for his performances. The New York Times called DeFrancesco a “deeply authoritative musician, a master of rhythmic pocket and the custom of stomping bass lines under chords and riffs.” “He dominated the instrument and the field like no one else of his generation,” said the Chicago Tribune about DeFrancesco’s music. DeFrancesco was also involved in the design and development of musical instruments, especially digital keyboards and electronic organs, both in the United States and around the world.
“Mr. DeFrancesco is a very skilled musician who knows how to put bass lines under chords and riffs by stomping on them.” – The New York Times
Multi-instrumentalist
Joey DeFrancesco is a multi-instrumentalist who has recorded using different keyboards (including acoustic and electric piano) and the trumpet. DeFrancesco is best known as a jazz organist, but he also sang and, since about 2018, played the saxophone.
Prizes and awards
Joey DeFrancesco was nominated for a Grammy Award four times and had more than 30 solo albums. DeFrancesco was nominated for a Grammy in 2004, 2010, and 2020. He also won the Down Beat Critics Poll for organ nine times and the Down Beat Readers Poll every year since 2005. He also won several JazzTimes Awards. DeFrancesco was one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Hammond Hall of Fame in 2013. He was there with Brian Auger, Billy Preston, Steve Winwood, and his mentor Jimmy Smith.