Roy Anthony Hargrove (October 16, 1969 – November 2, 2018) was an American jazz musician and composer whose principal instruments were the trumpet and flugelhorn. He achieved worldwide acclaim after winning two Grammy Awards for differing styles of jazz in 1998 and 2002. Hargrove primarily played in the hard bop style for the majority of his albums, but also had a penchant for genre-crossing exploration and collaboration with a variety of hip hop, neo soul, R&B and alternative rock artists.[1] As Hargrove told one reporter, "I've been around all kinds of musicians, and if a cat can play, a cat can play. If it's gospel, funk, R&B, jazz or hip-hop, if it's something that gets in your ear and it's good, that's what matters."[2]
Biography
Roy Hargrove at Monterey Jazz Festival 1992
Hargrove was born in Waco, Texas, to Roy Allan Hargrove and Jacklyn Hargrove.[3][4][5] When he was 9, his family moved to Dallas, Texas.[4] He took lessons at school initially on cornet before turning to trumpet. One of Hargrove's most profound early influences was a visit to his junior high school by saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman, who performed as a sideman in Ray Charles's Band.[6] Hargrove's junior high music teacher, Dean Hill, whom Hargrove called his “musical father,” taught him to improvise and solo.[7] He was discovered by Wynton Marsalis when Marsalis visited the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. Hargrove credited trumpeter Freddie Hubbard as having the greatest influence on his sound.[8]
Hargrove continued his musical studies at Boston's Berklee College of Music,[9] but soon transferred to The New School in New York,[10] enabling Hargrove to frequent the Greenwich Village jazz clubs and participate in jam-sessions, most notably at Bradley's, where he played alongside many of his mentors and heroes.[11] Hargrove's first studio recording after relocating to New York was with saxophonist Bobby Watson, for Watson's album No Question About It.[12] Shortly thereafter, Hargrove recorded with the band Superblue featuring Watson, Mulgrew Miller, Frank Lacy, Don Sickler and Kenny Washington.[13]
Hargrove's debut album as leader, Diamond in the Rough, was released on the Novus/RCA label in 1990.[14] This album, and the three succeeding recordings Hargrove produced for Novus with his quintet, were among the most commercially successful jazz recordings of the early 1990s and made him one of jazz's in-demand players.[15] It was during this time that Hargrove topped the category "Rising Star–Trumpet" in the DownBeat Critics Poll in 1991, 1992 and 1993[16] and became associated with the "Young Lions", a group of rising jazz musicians — including, among others, Marcus Roberts, Mark Whitfield and Christian McBride — who, embracing the foundations of jazz, played principally bebop, hard bop and the Great American Songbook standards.[17] Those associated with the "Young Lions", including Hargrove, formed Jazz Futures,[18] which released one critically acclaimed album, Live in Concert.[19]
As a side project to his solo and quintet recordings, Hargrove also was the leader of The Jazz Networks, an ensemble of American and Japanese musicians which released 5 albums between 1992 and 1996 and featured other notable jazz artists, including Antonio Hart, Rodney Whitaker and Joshua Redman.[20] (These albums were originally released only in Japan and Europe, but after Hargrove's death, his estate arranged for release on streaming platforms in the U.S.)[21]
Also in 1992, Hargrove participated in several one-off, ensemble recordings including the albums "New York Stories" featuring Danny Gatton and Bobby
Watson and "Pride of Lions" featuring Philip Bailey, Billy Childs and Tony Williams (drummer), among others.
In 1993, Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned Hargrove to compose an original jazz suite, and he premiered The Love Suite: In Mahogany at Lincoln Center with his sextet that year.[22]
In 1995, Hargrove released his second album for Verve, Family, which included his original song "Roy Allan," named after his father, which thereafter became a staple at his live performances. That same year, he experimented with a trio format on Parker's Mood, an album recorded with bassist Christian McBride and pianist Stephen Scott.[24][25]The Penguin Jazz Guide identifies Parker's Mood as one of the “1001 Best Albums” in the history of the genre.[26]
Also in 1995, Hargrove formed the Roy Hargrove Big Band to perform at the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival in New York. The band would go on to record and perform worldwide and feature big band arrangements of Hargrove's own compositions as well as his favorite songs by respected contemporaries.[27]
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hargrove was also a member of the Soulquarians, a collective of experimental jazz, hip hop and soul artists that included Questlove, D’Angelo, Common and others.[28] In 2000, Hargrove added jazz and funk-influenced horns in support of D'Angelo on his Grammy-winning album Voodoo.[29] He also supported D'Angelo on tour that year as a member of the Soultronics, a backing "supergroup" featuring Questlove and Pino Palladino, among others. That same year, as part of the Soulquarians collective, Roy also participated in Common’s album Like Water for Chocolate and Erykah Badu’s album Mama's Gun.
Also in 2000, as part of the Verizon Jazz Festival, Hargrove performed in Roz Nixon's musical production "Dedicated To Louis Armstrong."
In 2001, Hargrove was selected as a resident artist by the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal and performed in five different ensembles during the festival: As leader of his own quintet; as leader of a "special trio" with Christian McBride and Russell Malone; as a sideman with Monty Alexander and his band; with McBride in a duet; and with the I Musici de Montreal Chamber Orchestra, with which he performed his album, "Moment to Moment."[30]
From 2003 to 2006, he released three albums as the leader of Roy Hargrove's The RH Factor, a group that blended jazz, soul, hip hop and funk idioms.[33] The band's debut album, Hard Groove, was hailed as "genre-busting" by critics and ushered in a new era of hip hop-accented jazz. The band's second album, Strength, was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary Jazz Album."[34]
After signing with Universal/EmArcy in 2008, Hargrove released Earfood, a quintet recording "steeped in tradition and sophistication,"
which Jazziz selected as one of the 5 "essential albums" of that year.[35] He followed in 2009 with "Emergence," an album recorded with the Roy Hargrove Big Band; he received a Grammy nomination for "Best Improvised Jazz Solo" for his performance on the track "Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey" on that record.[36] In 2010, Hargrove released "Live at the New Morning," a DVD of an intimate club performance with his quintet in Paris.[37] Thereafter, until his death in 2018, Hargrove toured extensively and appeared as a sideman on recordings by Jimmy Cobb, Roy Haynes, Cyrille Aimée, The 1975, D’Angelo, Johnny O'Neal, Kandace Springs and others.[38]
Hargrove topped the trumpet category in the 2019 DownBeat Readers’ Poll.[39]
In addition to the accolades he garnered on trumpet, music critics also praised Hargrove's tone on flugelhorn and gifted ways with a ballad. As the Chicago Tribune observed in 2010, "it's Hargrove's ballad playing that tends to win hearts, which is what happened every time he picked up his flugelhorn. We've been hearing Hargrove spin silk on this instrument for a couple of decades now, yet one still marvels at the poetry of his tone, the incredible slowness of his vibrato and the arching lyricism of his phrases."[40][41][42]
Over his 30-year career, Hargrove composed and recorded several original compositions, one of which, "Strasbourg-St. Denis", has been characterized as reaching the status of a jazz standard.[43][44][45]
In July 2021, Hargrove's estate released posthumously via Resonance Records the double-album In Harmony, a live duet recording made in 2006 and 2007 with pianist Mulgrew Miller that returned Hargrove to the Top 5 of the Billboard jazz chart.[46] Slate selected In Harmony as one of the best jazz albums of 2021.[47] The Académie du Jazz awarded In Harmony its prize for "Best Reissue or Best Unpublished" album of 2021.[48]
Hargrove was posthumously elected to the DownBeat Magazine "Jazz Hall of Fame" in November 2021.[49]
In June 2022, the documentary Hargrove, filmed during the final year of his life, debuted at the Tribeca Festival.[50] Hargrove's estate issued a statement objecting to the film as not what he had envisioned when agreeing to participate.[51]
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of its performance, in October 2023, Jazz at Lincoln Center released a live recording of Hargrove's
original composition "The Love Suite: In Mahogany," a five-movement piece which he did not play again live after its debut performance in 1993.[52] Jazziz Magazine called the album an "unearthed gem" that "showcases the much-missed trumpeter’s virtuosity and soulful songwriting ...."[53]
Jazz critic Nate Chinen of NPR applauded the album as "a flat-out marvel — maybe the most vivid example we have of Roy's ability to marshal hard-bop fire in a new form, steeped in swinging tradition but sparking and crackling right now."[54]
A year later, in September 2024, Verve Records announced the release of a previously-unheard archival album titled "Grande-Terre" by Roy Hargrove's Crisol that had originally been recorded back in 1998.[55] Music critic Sharonne Cohen of Everything Jazz praised the recording, noting that "Grande-Terre brims with Crisol’s intricate and sophisticated arrangements, Hargrove’s explosive, imaginative and soul-stirring playing, and the band’s powerful, singular sound."[56]The New York Times was equally effusive about the album, noting that it "shows off the high-wire, from-the-gut jazz Hargrove played most nights of his life."[57]NPR Music included "Grande-Terre" among its "50 Best Albums of 2024," comparing it favorably to its predecessor Habana as "an even more fluent and focused celebration of Afro-Cuban musical lineage, with Hargrove and his Crisol band both in exceptionally strong form."[58]
Personal life and death
A quiet and retiring person in life, Hargrove struggled with kidney failure and substance abuse.[59] He died at the age of 49 of cardiac arrest brought on by a kidney disease on November 2, 2018, while hospitalized in New Jersey. According to his long-time manager, Larry Clothier, Hargrove had been on dialysis for the last 14 years of his life.[4] He is survived by his wife, Aida Brandes-Hargrove, and daughter, Kamala Hargrove, who in 2020 launched the company Roy Hargrove Legacy LLC to preserve and extend his legacy.[60] In 2022, Roy Hargrove Legacy re-launched the Roy Hargrove Big Band, which gives live performances featuring original band members and other musicians who supported Hargrove in his various ensembles.[61]
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