Etta Jones was born on November 5, 1928, in Aiken, S.C. and died on October 16, 2001, in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Jazz vocalist Etta Jones recorded more than two dozen albums and earned three Grammy Award nominations during her six-decade-long career. Her popularity peaked in 1960 with the release of her single Don’t Go to Strangers, which climbed to number five on the R&B charts. In the late 1960s, Jones formed a duo with tenor saxophonist Houston Person, with whom she toured for the next 35 years. “All I want to do is work, make a decent salary, and have friends,” Jones told National Public Radio in a quotation cited in the Dallas Morning News. Although she never attained a level of stardom comparable to such jazz and blues greats as Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington, Jones had a devoted following of listeners and made her own unique mark on jazz history.  As a three-year old she dreamed of becoming a singer and would pose in front of a mirror to mimic songs from the radio. Billie Holiday, who she saw in concert, and Thelma Carpenter, were two of her earliest influences. When Jones was 15 years old, she attended Amateur Night at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. Like jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, her career began at the Apollo, though at first glance her debut did not seem promising.

Jones made her first recording, arranged by pianist Leonard Feather, in 1944. In subsequent years she performed and recorded with such jazz personalities as Pete Johnson, J. C. Heard, Kenny Burrell, Charles Brown, Milt Johnson, and Cedar Walton. In 1949, she started singing with Earl “Fatha” Hines, performing with his band for the next three years. Jones also attempted to launch a solo career, though she was not successful at first. She recorded sides with such labels as Black & White and RCA Victor, but these singles flopped. At the time, R&B was enjoying increased popularity, but Jones avoided this genre, preferring to sing jazz. This decision limited her audience and her exposure as an artist, and for a number of years she remained an obscure singer.

Throughout the 1950s, Jones faced hard times and had to take day jobs occasionally to make ends meet, working as an elevator operator, an album stuffer, and a seamstress. She continued to perform sporadically, as opportunities arose. In 1956, Jones recorded her first full-length album, The Jones Girl… Etta … Sings, Sings, Sings, with King Records. But the album debuted with little fanfare and went largely unnoticed.

In 1968, Jones formed a musical partnership that would change her career. She met Houston Person, a highly regarded tenor saxophonist, when she performed on the same bill as him at a Washington, D.C., nightclub. Jones and Person immediately hit it off, and they decided to tour together as a duo with equal billing, a partnership that would last for more than three decades. “They say … a lot of times singers and musicians don’t get along too well,” Jones told Billy Taylor of Billy Taylor’s Jazz at the Kennedy Center on National Public Radio in 1998, “but we got along famously.”  Person became not only Jones’ collaborator but also–after 1975–her manager and record producer. Their connection was so close that some jazz aficionados have mistakenly assumed they were married, though they were not. Yet their rapport as musicians was unique, and they developed a conversational style with vocals and saxophone riffs. “[Person] knows exactly what I’m going to do,” the New York Times recalls Jones saying. “He knows if I’m in trouble; he’ll give me a note. He leaves me room.”

From the mid-1970s until her death in 2001, Jones and Person recorded 18 albums for the Muse label, which later became High Note Records. While these albums appealed to a relatively narrow audience of jazz aficionados, they occasionally contained minor hits attracting a wider group of listeners. In 1981, Jones received a Grammy Award nomination for her album Save Your Love for Me. A third Grammy nomination came in 1999 for her tribute to her former boss, My Buddy–Etta Jones Sings the Songs of Buddy Johnson.

After a battle with cancer, Jones died and was survived by her husband, John Medlock, two sisters, and a granddaughter (a daughter predeceased her). The day she died, High Note released her final recording, Etta Jones Sings Lady Day.

Roy Hargrove was born on October 16, 1969 in Waco, Texas.  He soon became familiar with the recordings of Maynard Ferguson, Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard, and in the spring of 1987, Hargrove met the man who would electrify his dreams of a professional career who is trumpet superstar Wynton Marsalis.

When Marsalis made an unannounced visit to the Dallas Arts Magnet, Hargrove’s school, he was so impressed by his musical talents that he immediately arranged special studies for him. He also recommended the assistance of manager-producer Larry Clothier, and as a result, Hargrove had the opportunity to travel to New York, and later to Europe and Japan. He soon became a member of the New York Jazz community, and under the supervision of Clothier, started recording as a sideman with Bobby Watson, Ricky Ford, Carl Allen, and Don Sickler’s Superblue band.

After graduating from high school in June 1988, Hargrove spent the summer in Europe, where he had the opportunity to play in several major festivals, sharing the stage with musical luminaries as Clifford Jordan, Jerome Richardson and Tete Montoliu. In the fall he entered college at the Berklee School of Music on various scholarships, including one from Down Beat magazine, which had selected him as best jazz soloist of the year. In 1990, Hargrove moved to New York, where he enrolled in the New School’s Jazz and Contemporary Music program.

The first recording of The Roy Hargrove Quintet, featuring altoist Antonio Hart, Diamond on the Rough, appeared in 1990, and was followed by Public Eye in 1991. The summer of that year, Hargrove was featured at many European festivals, fronting an all star package, The Jazz Futures. The quintet’s third recording, The Vibe, which appeared in the spring of 1992, was highly rated by critics all over the world, and the band toured again to Europe, Japan and the US. In 1993, tenor saxophonist Ron Blake replaced Antonio Hart, and with Blake, Gary Bartz and trombonist André Hayward, Hargrove recorded his fourth -and last- album for RCA-Novus, Of Kindred Souls.

In 1993, before he was 25, Hargrove was already a major star in the world of contemporary jazz, and was signed by Verve – Polygram, a label strongly committed to the promotion of young talent. For Verve, he recorded The Tenors of Our Iime, an ambitious project featuring Johnny Griffin, Stanley Turrentine, Joe Henderson and Joshua Redman.

During the late 1990’s Roy had also been leading The Roy Hargrove Big Band, a large group of young musicians he started out rehearsing a few years ago to work out his talents as a composer and arranger.