Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Anthony Hargrove was born October 16, 1969 in Waco, Texas to parents who discovered his musical abilities as a young child. He received trumpet lessons and was greatly influenced by David “Fathead” Newman when Ray Charles’ band played at his junior high school. By high school his jazz potential was discovered by Wynton Marsalis during a visit to Dallas’s Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He went on to spend a year at Berklee College of Music in Boston but was regularly found at jam sessions in New York and finally transferred to the New School there.

He first recorded with saxophonist Bobby Watson followed by the group “Superblue” with Watson, Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Washington. He released his first solo album “Diamond In The Rough” on Novus/RCA and followed with four more releases. In 1993 he was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and composed “The Love Suite: In Mahogany”. Hargrove went on to record “Family” in 1995, and then, experimenting with other musicians, as part of a trio, the album Parker’s Mood, in 1995 with bassist Christian McBride and pianist Stephen Scott.

Roy has played with a host of stellar musicians including Shirley Horn, Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis. He has stretched his limits performing and collaborating with D’Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, Worldwide Underground and played on the film album Like Water For Chocolate.

Hargrove won two Grammy Awards, one being in 1998 for the album Habana with the Afro-Cuban band he founded, “Crisol”. He is also the leader of the progressive group “RH Factor” which combines elements of jazz, funk, hip-hop, soul and gospel and has also ventured into big band with his latest album “Emergence”. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove continues to compose, arrange, perform and tour until he passed away on November 2, 2018 in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.

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