Wallace Roney was born May 25, 1960, in Philadelphia, and grew up alongside his younger brother, saxophonist Antoine Roney, showing an interest in trumpet from around age four. After attending both the Berklee College of Music and Howard University, he relocated to New York City in the early 1980s, and won Down Beat's award for Best Young Jazz Musician of the Year in both 1979 and 1980.

Roney first emerged in the late 1980s as a soloist with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, and with drummer Tony Williams, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. In 1983, while performing in a tribute to Miles Davis, he met his idol; he went on to study directly with Davis from 1985 until Davis's death in 1991, making him the only trumpeter personally mentored by Davis, and he was widely regarded as heir to Davis's modal legacy, his playing also drawing on Clifford Brown and Woody Shaw.

He recorded his leader debut, Verses, on Muse Records in 1987. In 1994 he joined the surviving members of Davis's Second Great Quintet — pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams — taking the trumpet chair for A Tribute to Miles, which won a Grammy Award. By his 40th birthday in 2000, Roney had appeared on more than 250 recordings, and his later career included the HighNote releases Mystikal (2005), Jazz (2007), A Place in Time (2016), and Blue Dawn – Blue Nights (2019). He died March 31, 2020, in Paterson, New Jersey, of complications from COVID-19, at age 59.

Roney's status as the only trumpeter Miles Davis personally mentored gave him a direct lineage to Davis's modal vocabulary that he carried forward across three decades, a legacy cemented by his role standing in for Davis on A Tribute to Miles alongside the surviving members of the Second Great Quintet.