For a generation that grew up on hip-hop and jazz, Roy Hargrove was a singular force and a bridge to both worlds, a virtuoso trumpeter whose sound merged genres and cultures with soulful precision that felt timeless and urgent.
Born in 1969 in Waco, Texas, and raised in Dallas, Hargrove grew up playing in church and school bands; by the time he reached Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts, he had already started to develop a distinctive voice on his instrument — a warm, burnished tone that soared and soothed; flashy and expressive with subtle yet powerful phrasing.
Hargrove’s trajectory shifted when Wynton Marsalis, the famed jazz trumpeter and bandleader, visited his high school and recognized his talent. As a junior, Hargrove attended a clinic taught by Marsalis, who was so impressed that he asked Hargrove to sit in with him at a club in Fort Worth, where he also performed with Dizzy Gillespie and Herbie Hancock. Later, Hargrove’s debut album, “Diamond in the Rough,” showcased not just technical brilliance, but a deep reverence for jazz tradition, a quality that would remain a hallmark throughout his career.
Hargrove’s power lay in his ability to straddle musical worlds without compromising his artistic integrity. He was equally at home playing straight-ahead bebop, hard bop and ballads while also exploring funk, hip-hop, Afro-Cuban rhythms and neo-soul. His landmark band, the RH Factor, blurred genre lines with elegance and certainty, uniting musicians from jazz, R&B and rap to create something genuinely new. Collaborations with artists like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Common and the Roots expanded jazz’s reach to younger, more diverse audiences.
Before his death at age 49 in 2018, Hargrove’s artistry earned him two Grammy Awards — one for his album “Habana,” and another for “Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall,” a live album with Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker. Below, 14 scholars, musicians and collaborators (including Aida Brandes-Hargrove, his widow and the president of a company overseeing his legacy) talk about their favorite tracks from Hargrove. You can find a playlist with the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.
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‘Speak Low’
Aida Brandes-Hargrove, arranger and band director
There are too many beautiful ballads to choose from with Roy. His tone alone, especially on fluegelhorn, will go straight into your heart and then melt it. He has an extraordinary gift for phrasing and interpreting melody, and his embellishments are always the perfect extension or elevation of the melody. They are often the most soulful and beautiful parts, so it almost feels wrong to pick a song that uses so little of it. But I picked this one because it is so stripped down. And yet nothing is missing. Roy’s commitment and complete surrender to the music and the melody are so front and center, sticking out each note to its fullest and to the very end. No big embellishments, just pure tone. No solos, just one chorus of unrestrained beauty and soul. And that gangster tempo! “Speak Low” is an exercise in maturity at that tempo. That’s that Shirley Horn kind of slow. It takes a lot to really do it, and they are doing it. His rhythm section is right there with him, playing just the right notes and leaving space for everything else.
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‘Always and Forever’
Ambrose Akinmusire, trumpeter, composer and bandleader
“Always and Forever,” from the album “Moment to Moment,” might be the deepest ballad performance I’ve ever heard on trumpet. It came out right as I was heading to New York, and it felt like a map. The strings are lush and not in the way — just enough to hold Roy. And he floats through them. His phrasing is quiet and patient, like he’s talking to himself and letting us eavesdrop. Every note holds something: pain, humor, the blues, urgency. Nothing extra. Just the truth. He reminds me of Nate Dogg or SiR: Black men who carry both edge and softness. That kind of vulnerability isn’t always safe for us. But Roy made it cool. He gave us permission to feel and still walk with our heads high. There’s a moment in that track where the strings come back in and time stops. And everything you’ve ever felt is sitting right there in the silence. That’s Roy. “Always and Forever” is him at his most bare. His most open.
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‘Spanish Joint,’ D’Angelo
Pino Palladino, bassist
Roy was an incredibly gifted player, composer, arranger and virtuoso. His command of the instrument was inspiring and he could fit effortlessly into any genre of music and raise the level. I’d like to shine a light on his horn arrangement on “Spanish Joint” by D’Angelo, which he co-wrote. Roy would only need to hear a tune once and would be ready to play. He would improvise his first take and immediately ask for another track so that he could add a harmony. He would repeat this process so that he could build up a horn section by himself.
On this tune, Roy’s sound and his intuitive phrasing are the perfect match to D’Angelo’s deeply soulful, uplifting vocal tracks. As Roy weaves in and around the vocal, his lines are conversational, leaving space, adding punctuation and taking the lead at the perfect time in the arrangement. As the song arrangement builds, his compositional lines add even more colors with legato phrases, close voicings and tight staccato hits. For me, Roy’s performance on this song, along with D’Angelo, Questlove, Giovanni Hidalgo and Charlie Hunter — all masters of time, feel and harmony — makes this a masterpiece that I will never tire of listening to.
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‘Juicy,’ The RH Factor
Steven Mandel, engineer, producer and songwriter
“Voodoo,” “Mama’s Gun” and “Like Water For Chocolate” had happened. Roy had contributed mightily and crucially to those albums — it was his turn. So how does one authentically incorporate all that soul, funk and hip-hop into a “jazz” release for Verve? Roy already knew. Most artists feel that the music is inside of them somehow. Few, like Roy, reside inside the music. True giants live there.
“Juicy” comes from the “Hard Groove” sessions at Electric Lady in 2003. Roy insisted on giving me co-writing credit for contributing a single line of lyric, “Juicy like a Georgia peach.” His longtime manager, Larry Clothier, lovingly demanded that I register myself as a songwriter with BMI. This would be my first songwriting credit. I still get publishing money 22 years later. The checks aren’t “juicy,” but at times, like music, they saved my literal life.
Looking through the control room glass, watching and hearing Roy Hargrove stack fluegelhorn and trumpet parts on all those brilliant Soulquarian efforts, was like the musical equivalent to “touching the hem of his garment.”
I was a bit player in Roy’s life. We were work friends, really. But he felt like my brother. I imagine that’s what everyone says.
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‘Where Were You?’
Angélika Beener, writer, podcast host and D.J.
Before he became a singular force in my generation, I first heard Roy playing a small room on the L.E.S. He was paying tribute to Coltrane’s “Ballads.” I was a teenager. My life, forever changed.
A few years later, chatting at the old Zinc Bar, I told him of his own ballad, “You know, that song ‘Where Were You?’ is one of my all-time favorites.” He said, “Oh, man … ‘The Vibe.’ Wow. Thank you. No one really talks about that album.”
By then, Roy had become Roy, a star, ushering jazz into the 21st century with unmatched swag, and an era-defining sound. His work with D’Angelo, Common and his RH Factor unified genres, creating permanent cultural impact.
But let Roy play you a ballad. See if you don’t shed two tears. That my appreciation for it meant something to him spoke volumes.
He and his collaborators — Antonio Hart, Marc Cary, Gregory Hutchinson and Rodney Whitaker — are beautifully tapped in on this 1992 recording. The structure, shifting pace, harmony, changes and lyricism of “Where Were You?” — magic. Roy, 22, delivers a soul-altering solo, channeling 50 years of jazz trumpet history and its future in every breath. For all his reach, his home was always the ballad.
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‘Lake Danse,’ Roy Hargrove’s Crisol
Jacques Schwarz-Bart, saxophonist, composer and arranger
I met Roy Hargrove shortly after arriving in New York fresh out of Berklee College of Music. I had been a fervent admirer of his music for years. A friend of mine told me that Roy was playing at Bradley’s with Chucho Valdés, another giant of the art, and despite warnings to the contrary, I broke out my tenor saxophone and jumped onstage. Two weeks later I found myself on tour with Roy’s Crisol Latin jazz project, and I began playing in his quintet and sextet. It is in this context that I first heard this composition: “Lake Danse.” The first time I heard it, I realized that it was a tune never recorded before. As per usual, he didn’t have a chart to give me. I was immediately fascinated by the succession of minor major seventh chords, with a constantly moving tonal center. The melodic motives kept ascending, as if diving deeper into a sadness that had no reprieve or remedy. Then the bridge deployed an array of light, hope and beauty, over which the melody opened its wings with an effortless majesty. I could relate so personally to that feeling of being lost and found through music, like an object that didn’t have its place in the world.
Two years later, in 1997, we decided to record that touring band in my island of Guadeloupe. I was surprised to hear this amazing song again and play it in the studio. It stirred in me the same emotions that had left such a deep imprint in my heart. Even though the record came out only last November, years after Roy’s death, that song has been an inspiration of mine for decades as a bandleader and composer. I hope it does the same to young musicians for generations to come.
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‘Trust’
Shannon J. Effinger, writer
Roy Hargrove’s 2006 album “Nothing Serious” has become a go-to for me in recent years, especially one song in particular: “Trust,” as it conjures his affinity for the piano.
Nearly all my encounters with Roy included a piano. Following two incredible live sets at the old Jazz Gallery, he sat down at the piano with my ex-boyfriend (an aspiring trumpet player) and played and transcribed the chorus for D’Angelo’s “Send It On.” While on assignment at the Atlanta Jazz Festival, following his master class, I watched Roy take random notes, build out chords for his group and compose an entirely new song to be played just hours later during his set. Most recently, I was fortunate to explore his profound connection with the piano further through conversations with several of his pianists.
“Trust” undoubtedly has similar origins. An unassuming melody that is easy to hum, it swells in volume and intensity. Featuring longtime band members like Willie Jones III on drums and Justin Robinson with a rare yet fanciful turn on flute, “Trust” also enlists the late, great Dwayne Burno on bass and Ronnie Mathews, an underrated hard bop pianist, who creates lush harmonies as Hargrove closes out with an impassioned solo.
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‘Roy Allan’
Christian McBride, bassist and bandleader
Roy composed many songs that have become modern-day jazz standards — “Strasbourg / St. Denis,” “Mental Phrasing” (a tune that vocalist Samara Joy uses as her play-on music), “Spanish Joint” (co-written with D’Angelo), and the tune that I picked here, “Roy Allan,” composed in honor of his father. Roy was one of a group of musicians who never lost his R&B/soul roots. Jazz musicians are always taught to do things like “push forward,” “innovate,” “find your voice,” and other tasks that aren’t always so instantaneous. In pursuit of many of those things, resisting the urge to embrace music from the past is often given a conscious or subconscious thumbs up. Roy never quite bought into that. He knew that his voice, his individualism and his pushing forward included his love for not only Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, but also the Commodores, Rick James, Chaka Khan and the harmonic and melodic influence of both John Coltrane and Gamble & Huff. “Roy Allan” is one of those tunes that cuts across so-called genres. If it were played with all electric instruments, it could have easily been a ’70s soul hit for New Birth or Ronnie Laws. Instead, it was an acoustic soul-jazz hit of the ’90s, then morphed into a luscious big-band arrangement in the naughts. This will always be one of my favorite tunes of Roy’s.
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‘Universe (Live),’ The RH Factor
Brandon Woody, trumpeter, composer and bandleader
I first found out about this live recording of Roy’s RH Factor when I was 16 years old. After going to local jam sessions and hearing Theljon Allen and Clarence Ward, I started digging into the world of Roy ’cause they told me to. The sheer energy, connectivity and vulnerability with his bandmates was something special for me to witness at that age. The first lyrics in the song are “Love one another / Living in harmony be as one.” I loved the message that the music represented, and it was simple yet honest and beautiful. The message was straight to the point, which I love, because messages that are like this will always impact folks the most.
Hearing Roy open up the song while singing his “isms” and bebop lines over the groove was such an important lesson for me, that if I can’t sing it I probably can’t hear it or play it. There is a lot of connectivity between the horn and the voice. That performance felt like these were family members onstage bonding. This is what I wanted my performances to feel like for a long time. I will always be inspired by and I will always listen to Roy. It’s a blessing that I get to play with my big brother Quincy Phillips, who was actually his last drummer. In ways I feel connected to him through Q. RH lives forever.
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‘A Time for Love’
Gerald Clayton, musician
Roy treated every single performance like it was the most sacred. He served the music with a genuine spirit, deep emotion and strong passion every time he put the horn to his mouth. I mean every single time. He also had such a wide range of musical expressions — the fire he brought to an up-tempo swinger, the tenderness he brought to a ballad, an ingeniously simple solo, a stream of notes up and down the horn, confidently leading a band, sensitively crafting the perfect backgrounds to a funk jam — I could fall in love with five minutes of any of it. I decided to go with Roy on a ballad. His beautiful, warm sound and tasteful phrasing would pull on the heartstrings of anyone lucky enough to hear it. He treated the task of delivering a melody the way the greats of the past would. To truly play a ballad well means delivering more than just the notes but also the lyrics, telling the story of the song through the instrument. Roy was an absolute master at this.
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‘Broski’
Sly5thAve, musician and composer
I always tend to like the earlier or less developed recordings. “Broski” to me represents Roy in his purest form — hard bopping, soulful, undeniably Texan, undeniably Black. The thing that draws me to this recording is the absolute rawness and youth. It’s a 21-year-old Roy, confident but not fully formed. Before RH Factor, before he became the master teacher of the community, before the big band. This was his first outing as a leader and that energy transmutes itself to the listener in a way that leaves you buzzing. His hunger is palpable and as a horn player, every time I hear this recording I am reminded to never lose that. Roy was ahead of his time in his swagger — he had access to the same 12 notes, but every note he sounded landed differently. It was “jazzy” jazz by today’s definition — no overt fusion with gospel, hip-hop, rock or whatever other genre, just pure unadulterated swing. But hip-hop was present — the lineage of Black music that can be heard in the swagger, in the form, the melodies, the harmony. You can hear McCoy, Parliament, Sly Stone, James Brown, Trane — it’s all there.
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‘Poetry,’ The RH Factor
Tyreek McDole, vocalist, songwriter and composer
I remember the first time I heard Roy Hargrove. I was 16 and just beginning my study of Black American music — though I’d always been a fan. Some friends of mine at the Osceola County School for the Arts put me on to this super dope trumpeter. We played his 2003 record “Hard Groove” from top to bottom, and I was undeniably hooked. I had never heard someone with so much harmonic sophistication, technical chops and fluidity move me the way A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar or Otis Redding could. And yet here he was making music that spoke directly to the people.
Then came “Poetry” — and did I overplay that track! It’s R&B, but it still swings. It cracked open a whole new realm of possibility for me. A “jazz” musician on the same track as Erykah Badu? Ha! The music didn’t have to be “correct” in the narrow way “jazz” academia can demand — it just had to feel right. (It was still incredibly musically complex.)
He’s one of the only people I know that could get Erykah Badu, Rodney Whitaker, Common, Kenny Garrett, Meshell Ndegeocello and Q-Tip in the studio. He brought people together! He made music for everyone! I’m grateful for all the memories I carry with his music — and deeply thankful that a human being like Roy Hargrove walked this earth. It’s a better place because of people like him.
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‘Hardgroove’
Stevan Smith, podcast host
Cool, refreshing and funky are words I’d use to describe Roy Hargrove and the RH Factor’s 2003 title track. It welcomed you in with grooving guitar licks, dancing horns and unmistakable soul. Featuring the jazz-funk keyboardist Bernard Wright, this lead jam session sets the tone for an album that helped lay the groundwork for future musicians to fly with boundless expression.
In 1998, I began my career in public radio at Morgan State University’s WEAA-FM. At the time, it was a jazz format radio station that served as my formal introduction to the music. I was familiar with most of the legends in the art form. Roy Hargrove was the first time I saw my reflection in the music. His appearance, style and love for the music were as bright as the sun. The influence of the jazz ancestors was clear, but he also represented the hip-hop generation, which was also influenced by blues, gospel and soul music.
“Hard Groove” is one example of the variety and freedom of Black music. It is one nation under a groove that metaphorically serves as a cookout that feels like good food, family and, most importantly, home.
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‘Roy Allan’
Karriem Riggins, drummer and producer
Roy Hargrove was a true genre bender. In high school, I listened to his records, and there was always a track that showcased his ability to move fluidly between jazz, hip-hop, R&B and beyond. When I joined his band, it was shortly after he recorded “Family,” an album that meant a lot to him and to all of us who knew him. One of my all-time favorites from the album is “Roy Allan,” a beautiful dedication to his father. It was part of a larger suite he composed for his family. When we performed “Roy Allan,” I would sometimes kick it off with a hip-hop drum break, and Roy would respond by weaving in quotes from classic R&B and hip-hop melodies. His trumpet spoke fluent soul.
I’m blessed to have shared the stage with him in his quintet for a few years. His love for music and fearless spirit inspired me to break boundaries and embrace all styles as part of one sound, one message, one purpose.
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The post 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Roy Hargrove appeared first on New York Times.
