Drums | 1925-2024

Roy Haynes grew up in Roxbury, Boston, the son of Barbadian parents, surrounded by older siblings with record collections that ran from Django Reinhardt and Art Tatum to Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He arrived in New York in 1945 and within a few years was working with Luis Russell, then Lester Young, then Charlie Parker. His career never stopped moving across styles and generations: Sarah Vaughan through most of the 1950s, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane in the late 1950s and early 1960s, regular dep work for Elvin Jones in the Coltrane Quartet, two Blue Note sessions with Andrew Hill ("Black Fire" and "Smoke Stack"), Chick Corea and Pat Metheny in the 1970s and 1980s, Anthony Braxton further out. His own records as a leader are among the most undervalued in his discography: "We Three" (New Jazz, 1958), a trio date with Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers, and "Out of the Afternoon" (Impulse!, 1962), with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Tommy Flanagan and Henry Grimes, both stand as substantial statements in their own right rather than sideman vehicles. He was nicknamed "Snap Crackle" for his distinctive snare drum sound, and described by the Wire as rhythmically earthed in swing era drumming, more fundamentally rhythmic than stylistically fashionable. He performed into his late eighties and died on 12 November 2024 in Nassau County, New York, aged 99.