photograph by Dimitri Ianni







Verve Records

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH ROY HARGROVE


The media and the industry has a tendency to build up a young artist to make a good story or sell a few records and then just as quickly, tear them down and leave them for the vultures. I cannot think of anyone outside of Bruce Lundvall who has had the patience and the understanding to develop a young artist. Roy Hargrove was one of the artists that I remember the media crowning as the next great. Ten years later, where is the fanfare? Hargrove is just as promising now as he was then, but where are his standard bearers? Perhaps they are out scouring for the next next great. But Hargrove has been resilient, continuing his remarkable development, most recently collaborating with R&B superstars D'Angelo and Common. I sat down with the young trumpeter and he spoke candidly about his beginnings, the young lion trend, and his recent forays into the popular music, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

ROY HARGROVE: I started playing when I was like nine years old in the school band. My teacher was a good teacher and he had a way of keeping everybody interested by letting us play contemporary stuff that we heard on the radio as well as our contest material. I knew by the time I was thirteen that I wanted to do this for a living.


FJ: What was the catalyst that prompted this decision?

ROY HARGROVE: Every now and then, my teacher would bring in some professional musicians to play with us and I guess when I heard David "Fathead" Newman play, he was doing a lot of improvisation and at that moment, something clicked and I said that I wanted to do this.


FJ: Let's touch on the Wynton factor.

ROY HARGROVE: I met Wynton when I was about seventeen. He came down to my high school and played with his band and he asked me to come sit in with him at Caravan of Dreams. He has always been a great help because he has always shown interest in youth trying to learn how to play jazz.


FJ: Do you have a passion for musical education as well?

ROY HARGROVE: Oh, yeah, definitely. I did a tour of New York public schools, about forty schools or something like that. I've done some Lincoln Center. I am available for clinics and master classes anytime.


FJ: You released your debut on the Novus label before you were twenty-one, looking back on that time now, was that premature?

ROY HARGROVE: I don't know. I wouldn't say that. As a matter of fact, it was something that really helped me because I got a chance to work with people like John Hicks and Charles Fambrough and Ralph Peterson. You know, Fred, I have always tried to surround myself with older musicians, veterans, who have been around for many years and have been working and playing this music for years and years. I could only learn from that situation. Every time I have recorded or played live, I have tried to surround myself with people that I could learn from. So it helped me to grow.


FJ: Coming up at that time in the music, you became an unwilling participant in the so-called young lions phenomenon. Did you feel the weight of the expectations?

ROY HARGROVE: I never really paid attention to those kinds of things, honestly. My concern has always been first, with the music and trying to develop myself as an artist. As far as people's speculations and how they view it and their opinions, it is not something I focus on. During that time, I could see that there was a lot of media attention going towards the young jazz musicians, but I thought this was a positive thing.


FJ: You ask most of your peers and they would say something to the contrary, why do you think it was positive?

ROY HARGROVE: Because people in my generation, most of them, didn't understand the importance of the history of people like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. They didn't know who these people were. So when they see somebody like me or somebody in my age group becoming interested in jazz, it sort of promotes, "OK, maybe there is hope."


FJ: You formed Crisol, featuring Gary Bartz, Chucho Valdes, David Sanchez, Frank Lacy, and Russell Malone, recording Habana in early 1997.

ROY HARGROVE: It was like an evolutionary process, Fred. It came about as a result of me working in the Havana Jazz Festival in '96. Chucho Valdes, the pianist, world renowned Cuban jazz pianist, invited me and my quintet to come to the festival. When I went there the first year, I remember just being amazed by the high level of virtuosity out of the musicians that I heard in Havana, some of the local groups and some of the bands that Chucho was in, mainly like Irakere, and the top group at that time, which was Los Van Van. This is before the big media splash with Cuba and everything. When I worked with these musicians, we did some experimental recording down there and sort of formed a band with a Cuban rhythm section with some guys from Puerto Rico, David Sanchez and John Benitez and the front line of New York based guys and we went to a festival in Italy for a week and played and on the seventh day, we set up in the theater and made the album.


FJ: Do you have plans to bring the band back together and record again?

ROY HARGROVE: I have as a matter of fact. There is music that is in the can that has to be sorted out. We have to work it out. There is a lot of material that we recorded because actually, after the album came out, we went on tour with the band with a little bit of different personnel, but the basic core of the group was there. We went on tour for about two years and then we went into the studio and made some recordings.


FJ: Habana was released in 1997 and it took another three years before you released the Moment to Moment album. During that time, a label mate of yours, Nicholas Payton has released three recordings and is scheduled to release another this year. Why did you have such a long layoff between recordings?

ROY HARGROVE: Right, well, actually, Fred, it wasn't my choice. It was something that came about because there was a lot of changes going on with the company during that three year period. There was a new regime of people. Actually, the people that I was working with when I did Habana and the people that I'm working with now, it is almost totally different. I just had to wait for the dust to settle.


FJ: As an artist, is the business process discouraging when you are forces in essence to wait while suits crunch the numbers?

ROY HARGROVE: I was actually doing some recording during that time. There was this live recording at the Village Vanguard and then there was also a quintet thing that I did here in New York. There was a lot of recording that I did with the Crisol band too during that three year period. Of course, none of it was released because by the time all the dust settled, we had a brand new team. It was too difficult because I am staying busy all the time. I'm always on the road. One of the blessings that I have is that I have a good manager who is able to keep me working a lot. So I am always busy and there is a lot going on.


FJ: As the new brass given you any inclination as to whether or not they intend on releasing those recordings?

ROY HARGROVE: I don't know anything about it. I haven't talked to them about it and they haven't heard any of the material. It is different. It is almost an entirely different team of people. It is a brand new President and a brand new everything.


FJ: Let's talk about Moment to Moment, why at this point in your career did you choose to do a strings album?

ROY HARGROVE: I judged from the response that I get from people when we played ballads. They always respond and say, "Yeah, the stuff you played, that was nice. You guys sounded good, but when you played that ballad, it was great." I hear people saying that enough, I said, "Damn, I should make a whole album of ballads." As far as using the strings was concerned, I've always enjoyed listening to albums that had strings on them and singers that like Shirley Horn and Clifford Brown and Milt Jackson. Given the right arrangers, it can be something that is really beautiful and can be memorable and not only jazz listeners will enjoy it, but other people as well, people that maybe don't even listen to jazz that much.


FJ: You mentioned Clifford Brown, whose album of strings is the preeminent strings recording. Brownie was also a trumpet player, so comparisons are inevitable. Were you concerned and how do you think your recording is different?

ROY HARGROVE: Well, I was mainly, I wasn't really thinking about Clifford Brown with Strings album as much as I was wanting to put my own thing on it. I wasn't really thinking that I wanted to be different from Clifford. I just wanted to make an album of some beautiful music.


FJ: Have you listened to Clifford Brown with Strings?

ROY HARGROVE: Oh, yeah.


FJ: Did you accomplish that which you set out to do?

ROY HARGROVE: Well, I was pretty pleased with how it came out and just thankful that we were able to get it done.


FJ: You have been moonlighting with some R&B superstars, D'Angelo and Common, collaborating with both of them on their respective albums. Let's first touch on your work with D'Angelo.

ROY HARGROVE: D'Angelo, I sort of met through word of mouth from my peers. A lot of people were telling me that I needed to work and hook up with this guy and that we were a lot alike. I guess people were telling him the same thing and we finally crossed paths. I went to see him at Tramps once. I didn't get to meet him then because I was watching from the audience. And then, I ran into him at my hotel when we were in Washington, passed him my number, and then I was doing a rehearsal with Trumpet Summit with Wynton and Jon Faddis and Nicholas and some other guys and he was rehearsing down the hall and that was when we hooked up. Some time after that, he called me to play on the Voodoo album.


FJ: You co-wrote a couple of tunes on that album.

ROY HARGROVE: Yeah, it wasn't like I sat down and wrote some parts for these guys. He had the tracks already with the rhythm section down and I went and played sort of obbligato over it maybe for one track and then I went back and harmonized it. That was how it came about. It came out sounding like it was arranged, but it was more or less a collaboration between me and him. As far as being able to write for jazz and R&B, it is all music to me. If you understand the style, then you can adapt to it.


FJ: And Common?

ROY HARGROVE: He is sort of part of that whole crew. There is a clique. It is like Common and D'Angelo and Erykah (Erykah Badu) and James Poyser and all these people. They all hang out together. It is like a family and they have kind of inducted me into it.


FJ: Is the pop lifestyle easier?

ROY HARGROVE: Every part of the music business has its drawbacks. So I wouldn't say I like it any better or any less. It is just different. It might be a little bit more comfortable in some areas, but then there is always something that you have to say, "Oh, why did it have to be something like that?"


FJ: I had heard through the vine that your trumpet was stolen from you during a performance.

ROY HARGROVE: Someone stole it, yeah. I got it back. There was this big media thing afterwards. I really didn't want anybody to know because it was kind of my fault (laughing). I left it, trusting people. I didn't think anybody was going to steal my horn while I was on the gig. It was like I was playing, we finished the set and I came off and they wanted us to play an encore and so I played the encore with my flugelhorn and I left my trumpet just outside the stage door. My manager, the sound guy, they were all there in the same area, but I guess they didn't see me lay it down on that table and while I was playing the encore, that is when it disappeared. And there was this big media thing and I was on the news and it just kept building and building and building and finally, whoever had it, I guess, got scared and anonymously returned it.


FJ: I love happy endings.

ROY HARGROVE: Yeah.


FJ: The knock on Roy Hargrove has always been unrealized potential. Does that statement have merit?

ROY HARGROVE: (Laughing) I don't know what it means, really. I think people who write that is because I am young. The jazz world, you get respect the older you get. That is all it is! You don't start to really get respect until you are old as hell. I am serious. Look at Joe Henderson. He's been out for all these years and he got his first Grammy when he was what, old as hell and he started getting respect then. It is like they are giving you a prize for having lasted. You pay your dues when you play jazz. You pay your dues and it is like if you can stand it for thirty, forty years, then, "Oh, OK, you made it, alright." Being a young jazz musician, you are always subject to some kind of criticism just because, "Oh, you're young. You don't know shit." Even the critics, who themselves, some of them are also closet musicians themselves and they might have known Bird or Trane and so they look at us and say that it is great and leave it at that. They have to put something on it like, "He's going to be good in a few years." They have to say that. It is not something that offends me. I understand where it comes from. It doesn't bother me. Perhaps if I were them, I might say the same thing.


FJ: What are you listening to right now?

ROY HARGROVE: Man, I have been on this Milt Jackson album. I can't stop listening to it. It is this album called Invitation with Kenny Dorham and Jimmy Heath, Ron Carter, and I have been stuck on that album. I have been on a Milt Jackson thing lately. I like the sound of the vibes anyway.


FJ: There are plenty of creative vibe players out there.

ROY HARGROVE: Maybe, yeah, I might work with one. Maybe. I don't know who. Yeah.


FJ: And the future?

ROY HARGROVE: I am about to go on tour of the jazz festivals in Europe coming up soon like around July 7. Recording plans? There is nothing that I can say that is concrete right now. It is sort of up in the air. I don't know.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and has his own MP3. Comments? Email Him