When I was a kid, I thought history was a documentation of facts told in linear and clean fashion. But as you know, no history is that simple nor one dimensional. Any story is experienced by multiple people in their own ways, who bring their own filters of attachments, insecurity, ego, and whatever else. Another thing about history is that a story told by whoever is in power, whoever has means, whoever goes first, whoever is the louder, or whoever bothers to take time is the one that sticks. I have been around a little over 30 years on the scene and mind you jazz scene is not that big but I have seen more than once that stories become history not because they are factual but somebody decided to tell them the way they want to and nobody bothered to point that out.

Which brings me to this "documentary" titled HARGROVE. I put the word in quotation because what I saw on the screen was vastly different from what I have experienced. The stories and speculation presented in the film was different from what I saw with my own eyes and experienced. I was there. Sometimes I was part of what happened. Some of what happened shaped me to be what I am today.