Philly jazz great and Grammy winner Joey DeFrancesco gets a tribute at the Clef Club

“As far as the organ, there’s pre-Joey and there’s post-Joey,” said Lovett Hines, founder of the education program at the Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts. “Everybody that’s come after him has to be judged by the things that Joey brought to the organ and to modern music.”

Joey DeFrancesco was only 51 when he died unexpectedly last August, but he’d established his place in the pantheon of jazz organ greats long before that.

An 11-year-old prodigy who toured with Miles Davis at 17, DeFrancesco went on to redefine the sound of the Hammond B-3 for a new generation of jazz listeners in the early 1990s. As one of DeFrancesco’s earliest mentors, Hines played a key role in making all of that happen.

He will now pay tribute to his former student, as the Clef Club hosts a memorial concert in DeFrancesco’s honor Saturday. Produced by the organist’s wife and manager, Gloria DeFrancesco, the event will feature a quintet led by trumpeter and Temple University Jazz Studies director Terell Stafford, with saxophonist Jerry Weldon, drummer Anwar Marshall, and guitarist/organist Lucas Brown.

As DeFrancesco began playing both the trumpet and the tenor saxophone, he invited Brown to join his band. “Joey was one of the greatest musicians ever,” Brown said. “Not just as an organist, but period… His ears were so huge and there were no barriers for the music to come out. It was like his brain was connected right to the organ.” Brown would take the organ chair when DeFrancesco picked up one of his horns.

DeFrancesco attended Settlement Music School, and was a member of one of the most remarkable classes ever to come out of the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA). His contemporaries there included bassist Christian McBride, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, The Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and members of Boyz II Men.

DeFrancesco had the unique ability to absorb the sounds of all his influences — organ forebears like Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott and Jack McDuff, but also other instrumentalists. “What separated me from a lot of other organists is the huge influence of tenor players,” DeFrancesco told me in 2021. “Saxophonists like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Charles Lloyd were always a big influence on my playing.”

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“Joey was a sponge,” Hines said. “Any voice he heard, he transferred that to whatever instrument he desired at the time, while still maintaining the power and swing and majesty of his main instrument, the organ.”

All of those inspirations converged in DeFrancesco’s playing, making for a style that encompassed the full history of jazz expression. He recorded two albums with Van Morrison and ventured into the realm of spiritual jazz with tenor sax giant Pharoah Sanders. His 2020 collaboration with lifelong friend McBride, For Jimmy Wes and Oliver, won the Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.

With DeFrancesco’s death coming at the tail end of the pandemic, Saturday will provide the first chance many of his friends, peers, and fans have had to mourn him together.

“Honoring Joey DeFrancesco: A Celebration of Life and Music” takes place at 7 p.m. at the Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts. Tickets available at clefclubofjazz.org