Wonderful! Wonderful! - Joey DeFrancesco

Wonderful! Wonderful! is organist Joey DeFrancesco's album for HighNote Records, released in 2012. The trio features guitarist Larry Coryell and drummer Jimmy Cobb, both veteran jazz musicians from different stylistic worlds — Coryell was a pioneer of jazz-rock fusion in the late 1960s, while Cobb is best known as the drummer on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. The unlikely pairing creates a session that balances bluesy, straight-ahead organ jazz with Coryell's more adventurous harmonic instincts. DeFrancesco plays both Hammond organ and trumpet across eight tracks, including standards like "Old Folks," "Love Letters," and "Solitude" alongside originals. His organ playing draws on the Jimmy Smith tradition of swinging, blues-drenched grooves, while his trumpet work adds a melodic voice that varies the album's textures. "Five Spot After Dark" by Benny Golson provides an uptempo blowing vehicle. Cobb's understated drumming — the crisp, brush-heavy approach he refined over decades — anchors the trio without dominating it. The album captures DeFrancesco in the prolific middle stretch of his career, when he was recording frequently for HighNote and performing with a wide range of collaborators. Cobb, who was in his early eighties at the time, plays with the quiet authority of someone who had been keeping time at the highest level for over fifty years.