Roy Hargrove
Roy Anthony Hargrove was an American jazz musician and composer whose principal instruments were the trumpet and flugelhorn. He achieved critical 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. 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."
Biography
Early life and career
Hargrove was born in Waco, Texas, to Roy Allan Hargrove and Jacklyn Hargrove. When he was 9, his family moved to Dallas, Texas. 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. Hargrove's junior high music teacher, Dean Hill, whom Hargrove called his "musical father", taught him to improvise and solo. 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.Hargrove continued his musical studies at Boston's Berklee College of Music, but soon transferred to The New School in New York, 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. Hargrove's first studio recording after relocating to New York was with saxophonist Bobby Watson, for Watson's album No Question About It. Shortly thereafter, Hargrove recorded with the band Superblue featuring Watson, Mulgrew Miller, Frank Lacy, Don Sickler, and Kenny Washington.Hargrove's debut album as leader, Diamond in the Rough, was released on the Novus/RCA label in 1990. 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. His burgeoning fame also propelled him to his first live national television performance in June 1992 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was during this time that Hargrove topped the category "Rising Star–Trumpet" in the DownBeat Critics Poll in 1991, 1992, and 1993 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. A number of the "Young Lions", including Hargrove, formed Jazz Futures, which released one critically acclaimed album, Live in Concert.
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. These albums were originally released in Japan and Europe only but, following Hargrove's death, arrangements were made by his estate for their release on US music streaming platforms. During this period, Hargrove also 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.
Verve and EmArcy era
In 1994, Hargrove signed with Verve and recorded With the Tenors of Our Time, featuring Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Joshua Redman, and Branford Marsalis. Soon afterwards, Hargrove released his second album for Verve, Family, which included his original song "Roy Allan", named after his father, which thereafter became a popular jazz composition for others. That same year, in 1995, he experimented with a trio format on Parker's Mood, an album recorded with bassist Christian McBride and pianist Stephen Scott. The Penguin Guide to Jazz identifies Parker's Mood as one of the "1001 Best Albums" in the history of the genre.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.
As Hargrove toured more broadly outside the US, his popularity grew, especially in Europe, Japan, and Latin America. In 1997, the Dutch public television station Nederlandse Programma Stichting aired the documentary "Jazzportret: Roy Hargrove" directed by Hans Hylkema, a respected Dutch filmmaker known for music documentaries. The documentary features extensive selections from Hargrove's live performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague in 1996 as well as interviews with Hargrove, his mother, managers and the music teachers in Dallas who guided him.
In 1998, Hargrove won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album for Habana with Roy Hargrove's Crisol, an ensemble of Cuban and American musicians which included Chucho Valdés, Russell Malone, Frank Lacy, Jose Luis "Changuito" Quintana, and Miguel "Angá" Díaz, among others. That same year, Hargrove sat for an extended interview and performed duets with host Marian McPartland on her NPR program Piano Jazz. Hargrove recounted his Texas upbringing, his initial fascination with his father's cornet, his early influences and thoughts about arranging and more; the program also includes a rare and moving performance by Hargrove, on piano, of his composition "Ballad for the Children".
Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hargrove collaborated with the Soulquarians, a collective of experimental jazz, hip-hop and soul artists that included Questlove, D'Angelo, J Dilla, and others. Hargrove added jazz and funk-influenced horns to D'Angelo's Grammy-winning album Voodoo and supported D'Angelo on tour 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, Hargrove contributed horn performances for recordings by Common and Erykah Badu.
Also in 2000, as part of the Verizon Jazz Festival, Hargrove performed in Roz Nixon's musical production "Dedicated To Louis Armstrong" and released his first and only album backed by a string section, Moment to Moment, featuring tasteful accompaniment by the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.
In 2001, Hargrove was selected as a resident artist by the Montreal International Jazz Festival 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 Montréal Chamber Orchestra, with which he performed his album, Moment to Moment.
In 2002, Hargrove won his second Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall with co-leaders Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker. Hargrove was nominated for four other Grammy Awards during his career.
Also in 2002, Hargrove collaborated with D'Angelo, Macy Gray, The Soultronics, and Nile Rodgers on two tracks for Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, a compilation album in tribute to the music of afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. He also acted as a sideman for jazz vocalist/pianist Shirley Horn and supported singer Erykah Badu on her album Worldwide Underground.
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. 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".
In 2007, Hargrove participated as a sideman in the first of two albums he recorded with Jimmy Cobb's Quartet, Cobb's Corner, a collection of 10 standards including "Never Let Me Go", a track that Hargrove often played in live performances with his own quintet. Two years later, Hargrove added his signature sound again to Cobb's quartet on the album Jazz in the Key of Blue, another collection of standards, this time also featuring Russell Malone on guitar.File:Roy Hargrove Quintet @ Dimitriou's Jazz Alley.jpg|thumb|Roy Hargrove with his quintet, including Justin Robinson, at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, Seattle, in 2012After signing with Universal/EmArcy in 2008, Hargrove released Earfood, a quintet recording "steeped in tradition and sophistication", which Jazziz selected as one of the five "essential albums" of that year. 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. In 2010, Hargrove released Live at the New Morning, a DVD of an intimate club performance with his quintet in Paris. Thereafter, until his death in 2018, Hargrove did not release additional albums but 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. Hargrove told KNKX radio in 2017 that recording albums no longer made "financial sense".