(CelebrityAccess) — Joey DeFrancesco, a multi-instrumentalist jazz artist who helped to revive the revered Hammond B-3 organ in the 1990s, died on Thursday. He was 51.
His passing was announced via social media by his wife and manager, Gloria DeFrancesco, who did not provide a cause of death.
Born into a musical family in Pennsylvania in 1971 and began playing the organ at age 4. Within a year, he was sitting in on gigs with his father, jazz artist “Papa” John DeFrancesco. By the time he was 10, he was in his own combo, alongside Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones, serving as the opening act at Philadelphia clubs for artists with national stature such as Wynton Marsalis and B.B. King.
He signed a label deal with Columbia when he was 16 and his first album “All of Me” helped to revive the organ sound for jazz, according to music critic Vladimir Bogdanov.
DeFrancesco formed his own quartet and began touring in the early 1990s, and later became a founding member of the The Free Spirits, along with McLaughlin and drummer Dennis Chambers and appeared on their Tokyo Live recording released via Verve.
During his career, he recorded or toured with numerous artists, including Ray Charles, Van Morrison, Diana Krall, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, James Moody, John Scofield, Bobby Hutcherson, Jimmy Cobb, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, and David Sanborn among numerous others.
He also released more than 30 albums in his own right, and accumulated dozens of awards, including multiple Jazz Journalist Association awards, being inducted into the inaugural Hammond Organ Hall of Fame in 2014, the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame in 2016 as well as topping the Critics Polls in DownBeat Magazine eleven times over the past fifteen years and the Readers Polls every year since 2005.
DeFrancesco also hosted “Organized” a weekly program on SiriusXM’s Real Jazz channel.
He was scheduled to perform this weekend at the Lewiston Jazz Festival in Maine, with additional shows planned across the U.S. for the fall and winter.
