Roy Hargrove Dead At 49
Jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove has died, NPR reports. According to his longtime manager, Hargrove went into cardiac arrest after being admitted to a New York City hospital last night for kidney function-related issues; he had been on dialysis for many years. He was 49.
Hargrove grew up in Texas and was discovered at a young age when jazz heavyweight Wynton Marsalis visited his high school in Dallas. He studied at the at Berklee College Of Music in Boston for a year before moving to New York City in the early ’90s, where he began playing alongside Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Smith, Branford Marsalis, Oscar Peterson, and more.
In 2000, Hargrove contributed horn arrangements to Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, D’Angelo’s Voodoo, and Common’s Like Water For Chocolate, linking the jazz world to R&B and hip-hop. He later reunited with Badu on 2003’s Worldwide Underground and D’Angelo on 2014’s Black Messiah, and he played on John Mayer’s 2006 album Continuum.
Hargrove won his first Grammy Award in 1998 for the album Habana, which won Best Latin Jazz Performance. He later received the Best Jazz Instrumental Album Grammy in 2003 for Directions In Music: Live At Massey Hall, which he recorded with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker.
Hargrove continued to play and record music until his death, and he was scheduled to perform at the TD James Moody Jazz Festival in New Jersey this Saturday. Revisit some of his work below.