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Roy Hargrove


mrjazzman

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  • 3 years later...
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I caught Roy at the Jazz Gallery in NYC last night.  Jaleel Shaw on alto, Orrin Evans on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and Nasheet Waits on drums.  Roy looks like he has been through an ordeal in the last few years -- he looks very thin and appears to walk with a limp.  However, the music was superb.  Roy was in fine form and the band sounded great together.  Nasheet Waits in particular was outstanding (as usual).  A young tenor -- Morgan Guerin -- sat in for the last tune.  He is someone to keep an eye on.  Hopefully, Roy has put whatever struggles that he might have been going through behind him.  A recording by the band that played last night would be more than welcome. 

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  • 10 months later...

All you people with your drugs and other get-high shit, just stop it. If you really want to die, man up and just do it. Otherwise, fuck you, you insensitive assholes. You're hurting people who still want to live, hurting them a lot. But you don't care, right, it's ALL about you, right?

Well, guess again.

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49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

All you people with your drugs and other get-high shit, just stop it. If you really want to die, man up and just do it. Otherwise, fuck you, you insensitive assholes. You're hurting people who still want to live, hurting them a lot. But you don't care, right, it's ALL about you, right?

Well, guess again.

I know you are angry, Jim but it’s not quite so simple 

lord knows I wish it was. Drug addiction is a tough rode to hoe and as you might know I have some personal experience - just this morning I saw a guy bit far off from death...

I don’t think I should tell this friend I saw this morning with 2 days clean again just off the streets of New York at 110 pounds to give up, die and beat the hell out of himself for everyone he has hurt over the past 20+ years - nor will I (or anyone at that meeting this AM) ever give up on Johnny Tickets.

see I have a dream one day to go to a show with Johnny or better yet have him speak for me at my home group to share how he - against all odds - finally overcame the horrors of drug addiction.

Yes despite my friend John having not been clean for anywhere near 90 days any time over the past 13 years, We will never give up on my friend - just like my best friend in this world who as far as what I heard yesterday is walking aimlessly on the streeta of a town not too far from here.

RIP, Mr. Roy Hargrove

 

 

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I get that the addiction itself is not a choice, and I get that coming to a place where you can own it is a journey fraught with peril before the destination is reached (if it ever is).

No it's not simple. This I know.

But there is a point where choices are made, not about whether or not to self-destruct, that is not really a choice, but about whether or not your own pain is so goddamned important that you don't care whether or not you inflict on those around you.

That's the decision that has consequences beyond yourself, and that's the decision it takes honesty and courage to finally make, rather than avoid.

Those consequences are simple. Painful as hell for all concerned, but ultimately simple.

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Well, damn.  That news made me cry -- and by cry in this case, I mean sob uncontrollably.  I really did love his playing.  I went to see him a few times up at Yoshi's -- twice when he was the headliner with his own group and at least once when he was a sideman with some one else (exactly who has escaped me).  What really stood out for me was his ballad playing.  I know  it is all a subjective matter, but when he played a ballad there was something in his tone or his phrasing or his conception -- something which just moved me deeply, in a manner unlike any other trumpeter of the past 30 years.  It's like the notes went straight from his horn into my heart.

Rest at last Mr. Hargrove.  You will be remembered.  You will be appreciated.  You will be missed.

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Nice Facebook tribute from my friend Stefan, a young bassist in his early 20s:

>>I just learned of the passing of jazz trumpet legend Roy Hargrove. I think this is the first time I have felt true grief at the passing of a musical icon. Roy was the reason a lot of cats, myself included, pursued jazz. I still remember the first time I heard “Hard Groove” by the RH Factor in 9th grade. If I could point to one moment in time that made me sure I wanted to pursue music, it was that moment.

He was, in my opinion, the greatest melodicist of our time. He had inimitable style, both musically and in fashion. He was a master of bebop and swing, as well as a bridge to R&B and Hip Hop. He incorporated Rappers and Neo Soul beats long before a lot of people were called “innovative,” simply for doing what Roy had done 10 years earlier. And he came by it naturally, as a member of the Hip Hop and Neo Soul collective The Soulquarians, playing on such as albums as D’angelo’s “Voodoo” and Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate.” I’d hear people talk about how great the “horn sections” were on those records. I’d say, “horn section? That’s literally just Roy.” And only Roy. He was all you needed to bring a record to life.

I will be forever grateful that I got to see him play before he left us. Even in his deteriorating health, he still swung, and played with such style and grace that I had never heard before.

Rest in Power #RoyHargrove<<

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