Erykah Badu Talks Her History With Late Jazz/ R&B Great Roy Hargrove, Whose Documentary She Executive-Produced (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi Erykah Badu, executive producer of the forthcoming documentary about late jazz and R&B trumpeter Roy Hargrove, wastes no time in elaborating on the influence her collaborator and high school classmate exerted on her life and career.“It started with Roy,” says Badu, who first met Hargrove in 1985, when she was a freshman at Dallas’ Booker T.

Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. “Roy was the first person I met in high school: he in the music department and jazz band, me in dance right next door.

We danced to that band’s versions of John Coltrane, Miles Davis. That helped me understand what jazz was, and how to interpret it.

It was a subtle rebellion. Roy was already a legend as a sophomore — truth is,” she adds, “Roy was actually a legend starting in junior high.” Hargrove would go on to legendary peaks in both R&B and jazz music: With the Soulquarians — the collective that also included Roots drummer/ bandleader Questlove, bassist Pino Palladino, keyboardist James Poyser and DJ/ producer J Dilla — who performed on legendary albums by Badu, D’Angelo, Common, and others; and in the jazz world with the likes of Wynton Marsalis and Herbie Hancock, both interviewed for “Hargrove,” which was directed by Eliane Henri, and premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12.“We felt real secure together,” says Badu (pictured below, right, with Henri) of the Soulquarians’ extended musical family.The film follows Hargrove from that high school to session work for saxophonist Bobby Watson and tours of Italy and Europe.