DALLAS — A documentary about the late Texas jazz legend Roy Hargrove executive produced by and featuring an interview with Dallas’ Erykah Badu is available to watch in its entirety in the U.S. via Amazon Prime.
The documentary “Hargrove” about the Grammy-winning trumpeter, Waco native and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alumnus directed by his longtime friend Eliane Henri first premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. In addition to Badu, it features interviews with fellow musicians Herbie Hancock, Questlove, Sonny Rollins, Mos Def, and more.
“I first met Roy Hargrove in 1990. My aunt took me to see his show at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. I had gone with my aunt to see many of the jazz greats play but this would be the first time I was seeing musicians that were in my age group play jazz,” Henri says in a statement on the film’s website. “I recognized Roy’s greatness the very first time I heard a note come out of his trumpet.”
The film chronicles the last year of Hargrove’s life. He died in 2018 of kidney disease at 49.
Badu recalls meeting a young Hargrove when they both attended Booker T. in the documentary. She went on to sing on Hargrove’s 2003 album Hard Groove. Wynton Marsalis, who discovered Hargrove during a visit to Booker T. in the ‘80s, also features in the film.
“I found out we had a class together and that’s when we figured out we had the same sense of humor,” Badu says in an excerpt of the documentary. “That’s what bonded us – our sense of humor.”
Hargrove was known as a genre-bending musician, jumping from jazz to bebop, hip-hop, and beyond. He won his first Grammy in 1998 for best Latin jazz performance for his work on his 1997 album Habana.
