Two-time Grammy Award-winning Jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove has passed away at the age of 49 years old. He suffered a fatal heart attack Friday night (November 2) in New York City after being admitted to a hospital for kidney failure. NPR confirmed the news with Hargrove’s manager, Larry Clothier.
Although Hargrove, a pupil of Wynton Marsalis, was rooted in Jazz and released two handfuls of solo albums between 1994 and 2009, he was instrumental to Hip-Hop. A member of the Soulquarians, the Waco, Texas native worked extensively on albums including Common’s Like Water For Chocolate, D’Angelo’s Voodoo, and Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun. His horn was featured on multiple tracks. All three of those 2000 releases were birthed out of a series of overlapping sessions. Later, in his own career, Roy fused Jazz with Funk, R&B, and Hip-Hop.
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In the years that followed, Hargrove contributed to other Badu and D’Angelo albums, as well as releases by John Mayer and Angelique Kidjo.
Questlove remembered his collaborator respectfully online:
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The horn player formed The RH Factor, a super-group including The Roots/Soulquarians’ James Poyser, sample source Bernard Wright, bassist Pino Palladino, and others. They released three albums between 2003 and 2006.
Hargrove recently worked on D’Angelo’s Black Messiah album.