Organist cooks at Bakery
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Muhammad Ali’s classic aphorism kept coming to mind during jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco’s opening-night set Wednesday at the Jazz Bakery. Like Ali’s stunning combination of lightning-quick mobility and dynamic power, DeFrancesco’s playing was an irresistible blend of darting, zephyr-like phrases and kick-out-the-jams thunder.
The B-3 organ is a virtual orchestra in a box, capable of producing sounds ranging from a big-time jazz groove to the saccharine insinuations of Vegas lounge music. It’s the latter quality that has caused some jazz fans to be leery of the instrument, in any format. But DeFrancesco, whose roots in the fertile territory opened up by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Milt Buckner and Richard “Groove” Holmes, has made it into a uniquely contemporary jazz voice.
He opened with a pair of standards, “Autumn Leaves” and “Squeeze Me,” displaying extraordinarily symbiotic musical interaction with guitarist Jake Langley and drummer Byron Landham. Seated, Buddha like behind his keyboard, DeFrancesco whipped off solos bursting with ideas, delivered with a sense of pacing that allowed an infectious air of drama to illuminate each phrase. Virtuosic, he didn’t hesitate to rip maniacally across the keyboard or toss in sweeps of electronic sound, invigorating everything with passion, drawing the audience into the music’s shifting layers of emotion.
DeFrancesco’s magnetic vocalizing ran from down-home blues on Muddy Waters’ “I Got My Mojo Working” to sweetly appealing on the Mercer-Van Heusen classic “I Thought About You.”
An unannounced appearance of singer Colleen McNabb was an unexpected bonus. She sang only two numbers -- “Don’t Go to Strangers” and “Waltz for Debby” -- but the warmth of her sound, the compelling quality of her phrasing and the buoyant lift of her rhythm were the stuff of first-rate jazz vocalizing.
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Joey DeFrancesco
Where: The Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City
When: 8 and 9:30 tonight and Saturday
Price: $30
Contact: (310) 271-9039