Roy Hargrove the prolific jazz trumpeter and Grammy award winner has died at the age of 49 due to cardiac arrest. Hargrove’s death is a blow to the music industry. Over three decades Hargrove managed became an elite Jazz musician and helped to enhance the flavor of Black music with his broad and elaborate horn arrangements. The best examples of this are in D’Angelos Voodoo, Common’s Like Water for Chocolate and Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun.

Many of his music industry cohorts took to Twitter to provide their condolences.

Hargrove was born on October 16th 1969 in Waco Texas. He attended Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas Texas where he was discovered by Wynton Marsalis. He continued to study music at Berkelee College of Music in Boston. He released his first album Diamond in the Rough in 1990. In 1998 Hargrove won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album for Habana with the Afro-Cuban band he founded. In 2002 he won his second Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album Directions in Music: Love at Massey Hall that also featured jazz impresarios Herbie Hancock and Michael Brecker. In 2003 Hargove release the RH Factor that was recorded in the famed Electric Lady Studios. RH Factor showcased Erykah Badu, Common and featured George Clinton.

Trumpeter and composer Theo Croker took to twitter to share a feeling that may be universal with respect to anyone who worked with Hargrove. “My heart is completely broken. The passing of legend #RoyHargrove is a  huge loss to the entire music community. No one single musician has ever represented the scope of Black American music with as much integrity as Roy. Simply put he was the greatest of all time. REST in POWER” he wrote

Hargrove was recently touring and was scheduled to perform at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark New Jersey at the TD James Moody Jazz festival.

Hargrove is survived by his wife Aida Barnes, his daughter Kamara Hargrove, his brother Brian Hargrove and his mother Jacklyn Hargrove.

-Precise

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