Roy Haynes (b. March 13, 1925): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

  

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

   

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

   

SUMMER/FALL, 2017

VOLUME FOUR         NUMBER THREE

ESPERANZA SPALDING

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions Of:

JAZZMEIA HORN

(August 12-18)

ROY HAYNES

(August 19-25)

MCCOY TYNER

(August 26-September 1)

AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE

(September 2-8)

AARON DIEHL

(September 9-15)

CECILE MCLORIN SAVANT

(September 16-22)

REGGIE WORKMAN

(September 23-29)

ANDREW CYRILLE

(September 30-October 6)

BARRY HARRIS

(October 7-13)

MARQUIS HILL

(October 14-20)

HERBIE NICHOLS

(October 21-27)

GREG OSBY

(October 28-November 3)

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2015/03/happy-90th-birthday-to-legendary-and.html

March 14, 2015

HAPPY 90TH BIRTHDAY TO THE LEGENDARY AND ICONIC DRUMMER ROY HAYNES (b. March 13, 1925)

ROY HAYNES

(b. March 13, 1925)

All,

The great Roy Haynes is without a doubt one of the greatest and most important musicians in the history of Jazz whose monumental contributions to the art of creative music over the past 70 years (!) have been--and continue to be--nothing short of astonishing.  The only living legend of the music who has played and recorded with every single major/essential figure in the past century of American music from Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis to Sarah Vaughan, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Jackie McLean and John Coltrane, Haynes is not only a national treasure but given his pervasive impact and creative influence on generations of younger musicians. composers, and improvisors throughout the world he is a global one as well.  Happy 90th birthday Mr. Haynes and may your eternally hip, suave, and gracefully stylish presence continue to inspire and educate us all...

Kofi 

http://www.npr.org/…/when-your-grandfather-is-the-greatest-…

Legacy

When Your Grandfather Is The Greatest Living Jazz Drummer

February 06, 2013

by Angelika Beener

National Public Radio  (NPR)    

   

Marcus Gilmore (left) and Roy Haynes perform together in Washington, D.C., in 2009. Haynes' daughter is Gilmore's mother.  Theo Wargo/Getty Images         

The drummer Marcus Gilmore is coming off a major year in his career. In 2012, DownBeat magazine named him its top Rising Star Drummer in its long-running Critics Poll; pianist Vijay Iyer's trio, of which Gilmore is a member, also took the Jazz Album and Jazz Group of the Year categories. Over the last decade, he's worked with an esteemed roll call of performers including Cassandra Wilson, Nicholas Payton, Kenny Garrett and the legendary pianist Chick Corea, with whom he just recorded a new album. He's currently in the studio working on a solo project.

Gilmore is 25.

It's no secret that he's also the grandson of iconic drummer Roy Haynes, but it's not something Gilmore wears on his sleeve — at least not in a typical sense. While he says he doesn't feel any pressure to follow in such enormous footsteps, he does intently advocate for his grandfather's rightful legacy.

"What people don't realize, when they talk about people like Roy Haynes as one of the great jazz drummers, is that really he is one of the original drummers creating the language for everybody," Gilmore told me in a backstage interview, in between sets with Iyer at the Jazz Standard in New York. "But people don't think about it like that; they think of him as a jazz great. But the thing is really the drum — the trap set — is pretty new, maybe like 100 years. If you're playing that much drums in 1945, that means you're one of the pioneers of the instrument."

In addition to hundreds of recording and performance credits — including those with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane — Roy Haynes is also one of the foremost architects of contemporary jazz practice. Arguably, he is the preeminent living jazz musician.

Gilmore's relationship with this 87-year-old legend, his grandfather, is a story of close family ties, an acute sense of history and profound musical irony.

Raising A Drummer

Gilmore was raised in Hollis, Queens, a New York City neighborhood renowned as a settling place of jazz musicians for decades. His musical pedigree runs deep on both sides of his family. His father, a saxophonist, and his mother, a singer, had a gospel group in the '70s. His uncle Craig Haynes, Roy Haynes' son and also a drummer, lived upstairs. Another uncle Graham Haynes, also son to Roy, is a cornetist,  composer and one of the founding members of the M-Base Collective.

Music was inescapable, but Gilmore came to the drums on his own terms. In fact, he had to convince his grandfather that percussion was his passion. "I knew I wanted to be a drummer as a profession at 7 years old," he says. "I knew at that point, but I don't know if everybody else knew I was as serious as I was." It would be three more years until Gilmore received his first drum set. On his 10th birthday, his grandfather gave him the one he'd been using.

Both Haynes and Gilmore started their professional careers as teenagers. But while Gilmore attended LaGuardia High School (New York City's arts magnet), The Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program and The Manhattan School of Music, Haynes is primarily self-taught. "He would say, 'Back in my day it's what you call [being] a natural,'" Gilmore says. "I remember it was so simple, the way he would explain things. 'Just start here, and then take it wherever you want to take it ... that sounds about right,' and that was that.

"It was really good for my development," Gilmore adds. "It wasn't that his views were so definitive. He allowed me to find my voice, the way he gave me the information. He was never dictating how things should turn out. He was giving me so much information without saying much at all. Older, wiser people usually do."

While Haynes wasn't giving his grandson formal lessons, he was grooming him for the inevitable. Gilmore was sitting in with his grandfather while still a junior in high school. In 2002, Haynes' Fountain of Youth band was closing out a jam-packed week at the club Birdland, which would become part of a live album. After the set, Haynes introduced the audience to Gilmore, and summoned him on stage to take a solo.

Now He Sings

Around the same time, Haynes started watering the seeds of another pivotal relationship between Gilmore and one of Haynes' longtime friends and colleagues: Chick Corea. The pianist and Haynes have been playing together since the 1960s. "I actually got to play with [Corea] during a Blue Note run [celebrating his birthday]," Gilmore says. "You know, I would always tell Gail, his wife, that we would always play 'Windows' in high school, and she was really happy to hear that. She said, 'Maybe you all can perform for Chick?' and I said that sounded great.

"Then she said, 'Or maybe you can play it with Chick,' and I said, 'Um... that would be great. Yeah, let's go with that one!' And so he let me sit in and I got to play with him and I got to play with [Christian] McBride and Joshua [Redman], and it was amazing. I was really nervous. I do remember after we played it, my grandfather was like, 'You didn't give him a solo!' Then we played 'Straight No Chaser,' and Chick let me solo the whole song."

Chick Corea discusses a passage with Marcus Gilmore during the recording sessions for the two-disc set The Continents. Corea recently recorded another album featuring Gilmore. i

Chick Corea discusses a passage with Marcus Gilmore during the recording sessions for the two-disc set The Continents. Corea recently recorded another album featuring Gilmore.

This relationship would blossom over the next few years. Gilmore was quickly becoming an in-demand drummer, playing with stars like Ravi Coltrane, Clark Terry and Nicholas Payton. Corea eventually asked Gilmore to go on tour with him. "There's no pressure," Gilmore says. "Definitely no pressure from my grandfather, not from myself and not from my family or Chick. Maybe some people in the audience, but I don't really tap into that too much, so it's cool. But there is some irony there. I think it's beautiful, and I know Chick does, too, and I know my grandfather does for sure; he always talks about that."

In 1968, Corea, Haynes and bassist Miroslav Vitous recorded the album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. Now seen as a landmark record in modern jazz, Now He Sings was one of the first recordings to feature a flat ride cymbal — which Haynes played, of course. Created by the Paiste cymbal company in the 1960s, the flat ride has no bell, giving it a tighter, brighter sound.

Gilmore recently recorded with Corea using that very same ride cymbal. "I mean, of course, for other reasons that record was groundbreaking, but that was one of the things; it was like, 'What's this cymbal [Haynes is] using?'" Gilmore says. "Of course, it's the way he's playing — obviously that's what it comes down to — but the cymbal was pretty different [for that era], so throughout the years, Chick would borrow it from time to time, because there weren't that many at the time. So eventually, in the late '90s, my grandfather gave it to him. Chick broke it out on the first tour I did with him, so I played it on that tour — and on this last record, I played it, as well."

'So Much Information'

Haynes has been a part of several seminal trio recordings, and led his own dynamic trio in the early 2000s, featuring Danilo Perez and John Patitucci. Similarly, Gilmore is making his mark as more than a capable sideman: His musical identity can be integral to the distinctiveness of a band.

Such is the case of the Vijay Iyer Trio, one of the most creative ensembles of the last decade. Gilmore and Iyer have been playing together for just that long, meeting through mutual mentor Steve Coleman. (Gilmore's uncle Graham Haynes, who helped establish M-Base philosophies with Coleman, was responsible for that connection.) Coleman's tutelage proved influential for both musicians, especially in cultivating their interests in non-Western musical traditions. "Most people tend to think of rhythm as secondary to melody or harmony," Gilmore says. "I feel that our work with Steve has furthered our understanding that they are all at the very least paramount in developing one's musical ability. However, it's safe to say that the most recent innovations in music have their foundation in rhythm."

The emergence of hip-hop helps to illustrate Gilmore's point. There's a strong hip-hop influence in Iyer's trio, and between the pianist and his drummer, the two have collaborated with artists like Das Racist, Dead Prez and Flying Lotus. Yet this, too, is just part of a myriad of influences that Gilmore readily admits is ever-evolving and expanding. "One thing I can say is that I listen to a lot of music," Gilmore says. "I spend a lot of time listening. I always try to approach things with an open mind, and I actually thrive on being involved in contrasting situations. It actually helps everything when I'm involved in expressing different parts of myself. I always try to take so much in, and I also have so much in me that I have to express. So I just feel like, for me, it's the most natural thing to be playing with so many different projects, because I have so much to say, but I think that's a result of taking in so much information."

This may be the most profound parallel yet between Haynes and his grandson. Haynes' 60-year career not only encompasses many eras of jazz, but his dexterity in both rhythm and style has taken him across the musical map and beyond genre classification.

"His open-mindedness is definitely one of the reasons he's remained so fresh," Gilmore says. "Another reason is that it was just something he was born with, because in some ways, his playing hasn't changed that much. It's evolved, but in some ways he was playing all that same bad s— in the '40s. I don't know where he got it from. To have him is a treasure. A treasure to the family, but also as a national treasure, too, actually.

"It's really just a huge blessing," he adds. "I mean, you know, it's all I've ever known, but at the same time it's still amazing."

As Gilmore and I wrapped up our conversation, he paused before preparing for the next set. "My mother was going to try to bring [Haynes] down to the club at some point, but I know he has to go on a cruise this weekend. So he probably won't make it out, especially with the bad weather. But my mom called me and said, 'Grandpa said he might not make it, but he said, "If Marcus is there, I'm there."'"

RELATED:

Roy Haynes Fountain Of Youth Band On JazzSet

First Listen: Roy Haynes, 'Roy-alty'

Here's Roy Haynes On David Letterman

All,

This is the magnificent Roy Haynes at 88 years of age in 2013 appearing with his ensemble Fountain of Youth on the David Letterman program...

Wanna hear/see/experience what GREAT ART really is all about?  Check this out...and pass the word...

Kofi

ROY HAYNES AND HIS 'FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH' QUARTET ON DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW

Roy Haynes: Drums

Jaleel Shaw : Saxophone

Martin Bejerano: Piano

David Wong: Bass

https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/october-november-1980-roy-haynes-jazz-legend-still-goin-stong/

Features    

ROY HAYNES: Jazz Legend Still Goin’ Strong 
by Scott Kevin Fish

Modern Drummer

I remember being slightly nervous about meeting Roy Haynes. He and I had spoken with each other on the telephone a few times and I’d just seen him perform the week before at a Long Island jazz club. It was an interesting format. Roy Haynes on drums, Marcus Fiorello on guitar, and Dave Jackson on bass. I’d seen the same trio a year before in the same club and they were incredible. Their music ran the gamut of emotions and it was always swinging. There was Roy Haynes sitting through it all, eyes closed, head tilted upwards behind a five-piece set of red Vistalite drums. Relaxed concentration.At Roy’s home we sat at the kitchen table and discussed the interview. He handed me a souvenir booklet printed by the Boston Jazz Society entitled, “A Tribute to Percussionist Roy Haynes.” The occasion was Roy Haynes Day held in Boston. I opened the cover and read: “Roy Haynes’ contribution to music, for more than 30 years, can best be illustrated by mentioning the many jazz artists who chose Roy to accompany them in the development of modern music- Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins and Kenny Burrell. In addition to these, many other renowned musicians have collaborated with Roy to make recordings now considered classics. During recent years, Roy has created an even larger following through world-wide appearances and recordings with his own musical group.”

I asked Roy if he’d begin by telling me something about how he first got interested in drums.

“I am a natural drummer, first of all,” he said. “There are some people born and whatever gift they have from God, it’s natural. Ever since I can remember I was beating out rhythms. In my mother’s dining room I used to pick up the forks and spoons and drum on the dishes,” he laughed. Roy’s parents were from Barbados. I started asking if he had any formal lessons as a child. Roy caught me mid-sentence and said, “No. That’s what I mean by being natural. I was playing all over the walls in my house. I remember finding a pair of drumsticks in the house when I was 7 or 8. They had belonged to my older brother Douglas. He’s not living now, but he graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music. He had genius-like qualities. I won’t say he was a genius, but he fooled around with guitar, ukulele and trumpet, and had all the instruments. I think when I found the sticks they were already taped up. In those days when you broke a stick you would tape it up. I remember drumming with the sticks all over everything. I had never had a drum or anything at that time so I just kept going from that.”

As a young man, Haynes worked the New England area in numerous clubs and with a variety of people, among them Phil Edmond, who led an 8 or 9 piece combo that played ‘shows and shake dances.’

“In the summer of 1945, I was working at Martha’s Vineyard, I got a special delivery letter from Luis Russell (bandleader) that was sent to the black musician’s union. In those days, they had a black union and a white union in Boston. He asked me to join his band. I sent Luis Russell back a telegram stating that I was interested in joining his band, but I couldn’t join until after Labor Day. He said I’d be playing places like the Apollo Theater, The Savoy Ballroom and different theaters throughout different cities in the U.S.”

Roy recalled, “I used to go to New York before I joined Luis Russell. My brother Vincent got drafted and he was coming from New Jersey for a leave. I don’t remember exactly what year. That may have been 1943 or 1944. My father and I, and my brother’s wife would go to New York to see him. The first thing I did was go to 52nd Street and when I got there, I saw so many people! Ben Webster! Art Tatum! Billie Holiday! Don Byas! I flipped out. I had never seen anything like that. So, I fell in love with 52nd Street. Some of the people had known me because groups used to go to Boston from New York in need of a drummer, and most of the time they found me. I knew people like Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas a little. I wasn’t exactly a stranger to them. But, 52nd Street was like a dream.”

Roy worked with Luis Russell from 1945 to 1947 when he quit to join Lester Young. Some time after that, Lester Young was hired by Norman Granz to go on tour with his Jazz At The Philharmonic series. The JATP was very popular in the 40’s and 50’s for showcasing some of the best jazz artists. One of the shortcomings of the JATP was that Granz would hire musicians who were primarily from the Swing Era and musicians pioneering bop and do a mix and match with musicians. For instance even though Lester Young had his own band, the band was not hired. Young would be hired and be expected to use a rhythm section made up of other JATP musicians. The drummers were primarily Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa and Louis Bellson.

While Lester Young was gone, Roy freelanced extensively.

“When Lester Young started his group back after his thing with Philharmonic, I didn’t go back with him. I was too busy. I was making record dates with a lot of the cats and the Fall of 1949 was when Miles Davis started his first group and I was part of that!”

Musicians that were fortunate enough to have been on the scene when 52nd Street was in full blossom always have fond memories of the jam sessions that used to go on after hours. Although they were sometimes referred to as “cutting contests,” Roy stressed two points. First, that it was rare for two drummers to be on stage at the same time for a number of reasons. One of them, he said, was because it wasn’t uncommon to find that two drummers didn’t even have two full sets of drums to play on! So, the “cutting” was usually done by horn or reed players. Second, Roy stressed that there was always a lot of love on the bandstand. Jam sessions gave young musicians especially the chance to play with great musicians and the opportunity to master their craft in a trial by fire situation.

“I used to sit in a lot,” Roy said. “But they would have to know you, or know if you could play. Anyone couldn’t just come and sit in. If you did, it would probably be pretty embarrassing because in those days they had things that they would put you through. If you played a horn they would play a song and take it through all the different keys. If you didn’t know your horn or you couldn’t deal with it, you’d have to get up, leave, or be embarrassed, or they’d just blow you off the stand! If you were a drummer would play fast or play a slick arrangement.”

Two of Roy’s earliest influences were still very active when he came to New York. They were Jo Jones and Big Sid Catlett.

“As a teenager, when I started I was into Jo Jones. That was automatic. In fact, the Boston Jazz Society asked me about different people that I wanted to be there for Roy Haynes Day. The first one I named was Jo Jones. Jonathan “Jo” Jones, and he was there which really made me feel good.

“Sid Catlett I loved because he was of that same feeling. Probably a Kansas City feeling. I met Sid when I arrived in New York. I had seen him in Boston, but really got to know him around 1950. I remember I bought my first car and had the privilege of driving Sid Catlett home one night.”

Besides a “natural” ability to play drums, Roy Haynes has a multi-faceted foundation. That talent may have always been there but Roy has played drums in some surprising musical situations. We were tossing around different styles of playing and I asked if he had any Dixieland experience.

“I had played with Dixieland cats in Boston before I went to New York, Barney Bigard and Art Hodos. So, I was very familiar with that. They had the Harvard Jazz Society in Boston and they were involved with a lot of Dixieland music. I use to play gigs with them. Maybe two “allstars” would come in from New York and they would get the rhythm section in Boston. People were always looking for me so I had sort of a head start.

“Then I got that big band experience by playing with Phil Edmond. We were playing a lot of shows and he had a lot of hard music. I could read music better then than I can now. I learned to read music at the Boston Conservatory. What I learned wasn’t called ‘reading’ music. It was called ‘spelling.’ We could spell certain phrases. Certain things we’d look at and know what they would mean. A certain beat, or certain rests. I’d know how much to fill in that particular rest and lead up to the syncopated rhythm that was written. These things I could just tell and then I would feel them out. And, I had very good ears. So, between the two I was a good big band drummer.

We spoke a little bit about Roy’s gigs with Charlie Parker, but he said he was saving a lot of his memories for a book he plans to write. He spoke a little about what it was like working in those days.

“You didn’t get a gig for a weekend, like two days at The Gate. It wasn’t like that. We’d stay at a place a week to three weeks, sometimes seven nights a week and five sets a night! At least four or five. Sometimes if the music was so good we were playing after 4:00 am and the people would still be there! Another thing was that musicians really didn’t work steady. When I was with Bird, he would go to Chicago, Detroit or somewhere else for a week. That next week, we didn’t necessarily go. The band would come back home until Bird got another gig. So, I started working with other people in between Bird’s gigs.”

I thought about all of the great drummers that came out of that era, like Art Blakey, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke—and I asked if there was much of an exchange of ideas between them.

“Well, I guess there was a certain amount of that. I knew Art when I was a teenager before I went to New York. I didn’t know Max well, but we became pretty close.” Roy paused for a minute in thought, then continued, “First of all, in those days there were less drummers! There were less of us. I remember in 1950 they were trying to draft me into the

Korean War. I was playing at Birdland with Charlie Parker and I had just bought a new car. People were telling me later that when I had to go down to the draft board, there was one drummer saying, “Well, If he goes in the Army I’ll take his car.’ Another drummer said, ‘Well, I’ll take his gig with Bird.’ None of the guys you named though,” he cautioned. “Those others were younger players. But, there was a lot of love. We were closer together. We saw more of each other in those days.

“There was a lot of love on the bandstand. A closeness, because in those days there was less money too. Sometimes that has a tendency to make you stick together. But, money wasn’t our concern. Our concern was music. Around that time a lot of musicians were leaving the big bands to try to stay around New York. Naturally, they wouldn’t make as much money, but they wanted to sacrifice just to get with their instrument and play with different people. Today it’s vice versa. A lot of people want to get with a band so they can go on the road!

“The guys that lived in California wanted to go to New York. That’s vice versa now. The challenge and the charis ma have always been in New York. The excitement. Okay, you get out to Califor nia and you get your paved streets, pink homes, green lawns and it’s beautiful. Then maybe you can just get lazy. Less inventive. Out here you get the challenge that is gonna kick you right in the behind and constantly keep you young.”

After Bird, Roy worked with Sarah Vaughan from 1953 until 1958. In 1958 he was a member of the Thelonious Monk Quartet which included tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. The mainstay for the band was the legendary Five Spot in Manhattan.

“The longest period I ever stayed at the Five Spot was with Monk,” Roy said. “We’d do like 18 weeks at a time. It was beautiful. Very interesting. I left Sarah Vaughan and went with Monk, but it wasn’t for the money. How much money could we make at the Five Spot? But, I loved every minute of it. It was a challenge. You know it’s different to play with Monk. You can’t play with Monk the way you can play with a lot of other people, a lot of other pianists. I don’t think a lot of people realize that. A lot of artists think you can go anywhere and play the same.”

Did Haynes have to drastically alter his drum style?

“On some tunes, in some instances, yes,” he nodded. “I never changed my whole concept. I’d just make adjustments, because if I changed my whole concept I don’t think they would have wanted me then. That’s why they hired me! A lot of people try that. They take you somewhere and you do a record date and they want you to do something all the way through that has nothing to do with you.”

In an interview I did for Modern Drummer two years ago, Mel Lewis told me that he recalled Roy Haynes talking about drum concepts in the 1940’s that Elvin Jones was using in the I960’s. “Roy was the first ‘out’ drummer,” Lewis said. For instance, a characteristic of Haynes’ style is the elimination of the hi-hat playing steady 2 and 4. All limbs become equally independent.

I mentioned Mel’s comment and asked Roy about the traditional timekeeping role of the hi-hat. “I never really got into that,” he laughed. “Sometime you would make a date with somebody that was used to that and it becomes very uneasy. I mean, a lot of people get restless. They don’t want to be around you because you’re not being a slave for them. Dig?

“Mingus use to say the damndest thing about me years ago,” he continued. “He’d say, ‘Well, Roy Haynes. You don’t always play the beat, you suggest the beat!’ Roy smiled then said, “I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. But I know that the beat is supposed to be there. If I leave out a beat, it’s still there. If I’m playing 8 or 12 bar fills and I play four and a half bars then leave out a bar and a half, that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to sound like that! But if I’ m playing with a horn player sometimes they may get confused. They get hung up because I didn’t fill in that bar and a half.

“You’ve got to use a little imagination in there,” Roy explained. “That bar and a half still counts. I’ll come out in the right place, where it should be to make the fill even, and the other players are somewhere else at that point. I didn’t always play the beat, which I thought was very good. You don’t always have to say ding ding-da ding ding-da ding, you know. It’s there! So, if one of those saxophone players has to depend on that, then you know he’s not right.

“You’ve got to have that ding-ding-dading within yourself. Coltrane had it! Pres had it. Miles has it. So, it’s beautiful to play with them, but there are so many other people who don’t have that thing and you’ve got to carry them. How you gonna be inventive and create when you’re trying to lift them up?”

Regarding his friend Elvin Jones, Roy said, “I always loved Elvin’s concept.” The two men have known each other since the early 50’s and there was a club in Detroit where Elvin used to play. When possible Roy would sit in and said that there was always a tape recorder running at the club. “It was Elvin’s gig, and I know they had a tape recorder there, so he knew something about me. Now leave me alone,” Roy laughed, and that was all that he would say about who influenced who.

It was fitting that John Coltrane chose Roy to replace Elvin Jones both in live performances and on record whenever Elvin was not available. Between 1961 and 1965 Roy Haynes made some classic recordings with the John Coltrane Quartet which have just been released on a Coltrane record called, “To The Beat of A Different Drum.” In the notes Coltrane said, “Roy Haynes is one of the best drummers I’ve ever worked with. I always tried to get him when Elvin Jones wasn’t able to make it. There’s a difference between them. Elvin’s feeling was a driving force. Roy’s was more of a spreading, a permeating. Well, they both have a way of spreading the rhythm, but they’re different. They’re both very accomplished. You can feel what they’re doing and get with it.”

Haynes shared some of his feelings about working with the Coltrane Quartet. “Even on a ballad, when they played, the intensity was up, up there. I liked that feeling. Everyone was doing their thing. No one was dependent on one person, the way it could happen with some groups. A lot of people depend on the drummer. There, it was equally distributed. Even though you couldn’t always hear Garrison (bassist) the way you should, don’t let him stop playing because you would definitely miss him. The feeling was there. The intensity of McCoy and Trane, that was really a love supreme.”

Elvin Jones is quoted as saying that what made the Coltrane Quartet so special is that they were all friends. Haynes agreed. “It was there on that bandstand. I felt it. And, it was no easy thing at that point to replace Elvin. At that point it was not easy. It was easy in a sense to play with Trane, but that whole group as one thing, each one of ’em was so important, and to step in there, it was a serious thing. It was probably one of the most serious projects I was involved with at that point.

“Another thing, about Trane. He set it up where a lot of drummers could sound good, but they might not make him feel comfortable. I get that feeling with certain bands that Basie had. When Thad Jones and all those guys were with the band, (mid 50’s) that band could play without a drummer! Trane could play without a drummer. Miles could. Gene Ammons could play without a drummer and they could all make it happen! I could name a lot of people that can’t and they’re supposed to be great. That’s what jazz is to me. If you want to use the word ‘jazz.’ There’s not too many jazz players around today. Very few.”

Roy mentioned earlier in the conversation that he was saving certain things for his book. I asked him if he was serious about writing it. “I have to do a book,” he said. “I’m of the age where I’ve been involved. I played with Louis Armstrong! Billie Holiday! I played with so many different people.” At the beginning of this interview I mentioned some of the more traditional names that Roy performed with. Others were very surprising, showing that Roy Haynes is extremely versatile and open-minded. For instance, he played with Ike and Tina Turner. Another time he recorded with Ray Charles and later B. B. King. I asked Roy if he’d like to play a straight ahead Blues gig.

“I would like to, but I did that in the 40’s in Boston. There was a place called Little Dixie in Boston. We had some nights where we had somebody on the show and that’s what they were about. That’s what I had to do. I had to play the backbeat. And with Luis Russell. You ever hard of those Doo Wop groups? Each one of them had a name: The Ravens, The Falcons, The Orioles. We use to call them the ‘bird, bird groups.’ I played with the first one of them, The Ravens. And then it was the backbeat. I mean, heavy on the 2 and 4. That’s where rock came from.”

Roy sat spinning a foreign coin on the table top. “Do you want to talk about drum technique?” I asked him. “I don’t know anything about technique,” he replied. I countered. “You mean you have no idea what you’re doing at the drum set?” He smiled. “I probably could play something that they don’t have a name for. But society as it is today is always quick to name something. I never was involved with that. I don’t even like the way the name sounds! Double triplet or ratamacue,” he scoffed. “I never liked that. Maybe I play them. I probably play a lot of them. I don’t care. I told you I was a natural from the start.

“One time I was at a clinic and somebody said something about the matched grip. We were doing that before they had a name for it, in the 40’s. To my knowledge they didn’t call it anything. I’m not involved with the English language and that’s all it is. I go by sound. I go by feeling.”

How does Haynes feel about drummers who want to go to school to study drumming?

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “They probably know and they’ll probably make more money than people like myself. I can name some already and they know all the terms. I never was interested in the titles and terms. You know, that’s a newer thing. Years ago we just felt comfortable trying to play some good music. But then we were playing mostly saloons and clubs and a lot of the newer players don’t even want to play around with things like that. But, I came up with that.”

Roy is a clinician for the Ludwig Drum Company and is a favorite at symposiums. He explained to me how he bridged the gap of explaining technical material without being technical. “People are hungry for the naturalness of music. There are some people coming up today that don’t even want to hear words. They don’t even want to relate to having something written on the board. They want you to tell them and show them how you do what you do. There are some clinics, where they’d rather have you play than talk. There are also the other clinics that are not real. They’d rather talk about drums rather than display it.”

I asked Haynes, “Suppose you’re giving a demonstration and some kid asks you what you just played. What would you tell him?”

Roy answered with, “You don’t have to give them a name for it. Whatever it was, you can just show them! Everything doesn’t have a name. Especially if you’re creative. If you’re going to play the same thing over and over again, and you play only things you have a name for, you’re going to be limited. But, if you’re going to create while you are doing that, that’s gonna blow their mind. The real people. Even if they’re not real, they’re gonna feel so much in what you play that they have to say, ‘Oh man. He’s incredible.’ A lot of people fight the truth and the truth will always outlive

Haynes explained that in the classroom, “I’ll tell students right from the beginning that my classes are going to be different from any other classes. They’re gonna be relaxed and we’re gonna get into the instrument. I let a lot of them come up and play. I had a thing where I was letting them do 4 bars of silence and 4 bars of playing to see who could really feel it and it took off into such a thing. Nobody teaches like that. ‘Do 4 bars of silence’. Even if you have a few bars of silence you still count that. And that’s my conception. What I just told you is a lesson in itself.

“I try to be truthful. I like to be able to look at my kids like this!” Roy gave me a hard piercing stare across the table and held it on me as he continued speaking. “I like to be able to look at anybody like that when I say something. Stan Getz used to say I looked an audience dead in the eye. I say ‘Well, how do you feel? How do you all feel out there? Not saying I’m the most truthful cat in the world. I’m not saying that. But that’s the way I feel and I feel good.”

Haynes has been leading his own band for several years and has two recent albums out on Galaxy Records. We spoke about the responsibilities involved in leading a band and about the business involved. “Speaking from a business perspective you’re not gonna do that much of it. You’re either going to have somebody do it or you’re not going to do that much of it. It’s hard to really do both successfully. It’s not that easy. You should know as much about the business as possible, unless you’re just so relaxed, or you’re so much of an idiot that you have to have someone take care of everything for you. You’ve got to know as much as you can. It depends on where you want to go. If I go somewhere and play there has to be a purpose. It’s something that I feel. I don’t want to be out there night after night, week after week,” Roy confessed. “I wanna have time to relax and breath and think and then play in between.

“I didn’t want to be constantly out there years ago when I was just a plain sideman. So, there has to be some understanding with the musicians I’m with. I’ve been very fortunate. A lot of people want to play with me. So, maybe that’s in my favor.”

Over the past ten years especially, Roy Haynes has been working with many of the younger generation musicians who have emerged as top players of the 1970’s. People like Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette and Gary Burton. It occurred to me that Roy might be feeling like somewhat of an older statesman of jazz.

“Not necessarily,” he chuckled. “Especially the guys you mentioned. They’re pretty established now. If you had asked that maybe some years ago, but still, you can’t tell the way anyone looks at you. I’ve had people I’ve recorded with come back to me years later and tell me how nervous they were then. It really makes you stop and think. Sometimes some of the younger guys call me up and ask, ‘Well, how do you feel?’ or they tell me ‘Take care of yourself.’ That makes you stop and think, ‘Well, what’s happening to me? Am I dying or something?’ ” Roy laughed.

Roy doesn’t have a practice routine per se. He keeps a small 4 piece teak Ludwig set in his basement, but sometimes he doesn’t even look at them.

“I leave them all the time,” he told me. “Constantly. More than I ever did. In the last five years or so I play less than I used to. Sometimes I don’t even want to look at them, but they’re constantly inside, all the time.” Haynes tapped his chest. “Right here, man. You talk about love! I have it in my heart, man. The heart beat. That’s the drum! I’m drumming while I’m eating, or when I’m sitting on a plane flying somewhere, or when I’m riding in my car listening to sounds. I’m constantly playing.

“I listen to everything. I listen to sounds. I don’t just make it a point to listen to all drummers. I listen to music. I get so tired listening to the supposed jazz stations. I like to turn on some very relaxed stations and listen to some relaxed stuff.”

The first time I saw Roy play he was using a 5-piece set of Red Vistalite drums. Now he uses a single headed bass drum, six single head mounted toms, one floor tom, an array of cymbals, a gong, woodblocks, and a variety of gadgets.

According to Haynes, “It’s interesting. The set I have now, the see thru drums—people love them. And somebody will come into a club and they’ll get wrapped up with the drums right away. Even before you play you got it made! I read a review about myself in some paper and the reviewer wrote, ‘Roy Haynes’ drums look better than they sound.’ That’s the worse thing I’ve ever seen written about myself.”

About the added percussion, Haynes explained it by simply saying, “I like sounds. It adds rather than just hitting the drums seeing how great and fast you are.”

Finally, Roy talked about the care and tuning of drums, and also about studio conditions versus live performances.

“I spend a lot of time with them anywhere, anytime. But, in a studio, naturally you spend more time with them. They have to be just so. The engineer has to get a certain sound and you have to work together. You’ve got to try to get a sound that you’re going to enjoy.

“In the club the drums are as is. You want to satisfy yourself first. But in a studio, when they start mixing it, you’re going to lose certain things and add others. I could go into Van Gelders years ago and just set my drums up and Van Gelder would take care of it. Today, it’s not like that. An engineer will give you a sound that you don’t know you’re getting. You have some control but he may think that you’re going to like what he’s doing. If someone hires you for a date, you’re supposed to have control of your sound anyway. You can speak to the engineer and the people in charge. I do! It doesn’t always come off the way I want it to but I say something.”

It was late. Roy Haynes is the kind of man you could talk to for weeks and still feel like there’s an untapped well of knowledge within. I thanked Roy for his time and knowledge, and started to pack up. He walked over to the kitchen counter and started eating out of a pan. “I bet you don’t know what this is,” he challenged. It looked like mushrooms. “No,” he laughed. I tried to see through the tomato sauce and guessed again. Chicken? “Yeah. Want some? It might be too spicy for you,” he laughed again. It wasn’t. Roy gave me some great closing words that I thought a lot about on the way home. He said, “You just tell them that imagination is the greatest thing in the world.” I hope he writes his book.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2006/05/making_fun_of_drummers.html

Music

Pop, jazz, and classical

May 16, 2006 
Making Fun of Drummers 

Listening to Roy Haynes will cure you of this habit.

by Stanley Crouch

SLATE

Roy Haynes

Recently, Roy Haynes proved himself the last of the grand master jazz drummers standing at full power. He celebrated his 81st birthday at the Village Vanguard and made his listeners witness to what can only be described as an aesthetic miracle. His every stroke had the wisdom of nuance one would expect from a professional who has performed and recorded in New York since 1945—that was hardly the miraculous part. Haynes, however, created a signal experience by somehow performing every tune as though he had just turned 40. We expect—and get—so much "less" when the oldest of our masters appear in public performance. While they may have made their reputations by meeting grueling demands of imposing magnitude, in their twilight years, their audience thankfully settles for subtle authority instead of an artistry full of muscular fireworks. The late concerts of Vladimir Horowitz constitute a prime example.

So, no one really expected what was heard, but crowds filled the house each set because the word went out that something extraordinary was taking place in the literal underground of that most famous of jazz basements. The audiences responded with ovations to sets that were sometimes 90 minutes long because Haynes, filled with the steam of empathetic inspiration, seemed intent on swing-swang-swinging until the cows came home. The cheering throughout the week was affirmative proof that pure music, free of tricks and grandstanding, can touch everyone when pulled out of the air with the authority of an unpredictable master.

Haynes is one of the geniuses of American feeling who arrive in small packages. At 5 feet 4 inches tall, he reminds us that Louis Armstrong and a good number of the giants of this most American of music were compact men. The aesthetic size and sensitivity of his talent evolved through his work with Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, and John Coltrane. One can hear the essences of all of those bandstands, concert jobs, dances, parties, and jam sessions in the freedom of his beat and command of tempo. With Charlie Parker, one could play as fast as possible; with Sarah Vaughan one might have to keep a tempo so slow that the beats seemed three blocks apart; with Thelonious Monk, the music demanded uncommon speeds that fell between the regular versions of fast, medium, and slow. The drummer absorbed it all.

As a mastermind of the trap set, Haynes plays an assemblage of cymbals and drums that was invented in the 20th century so that the jazz drummer could use all of his limbs to create the sound of an ensemble. The idea was to imitate the resources available to the pit drummers in movie theaters, who had an array of percussion devices to create drum parts and sound effects for shows, jugglers, dancers, and silent films. The fusion of marching band and theatrical percussion developed from the teens until World War II, with drummers, however well they played, forced to listen to the same line over and over: "We're a band of 11 musicians and a drummer."

Impressively, Haynes invented a style that has expanded while never becoming dated. In the 1940s—following the innovations of Kenny Clarke and Max Roach—Art Blakey and Haynes became the next two originals in the new style of bebop, which was built upon a looser approach to the rhythm. It was a motion away from the rudimental figures that had defined jazz drumming from the start. Haynes' drumming reached its first peak of influence through his loose beat and his crisp way of creating a dialogue with the soloist by deftly using a range of cymbals and drums. Haynes has a unique degree of independent coordination of hands and feet, and the result was an extremely intricate way of swinging. Syncopation, or accenting unexpected beats, was only the beginning of what Haynes did. For all their originality, both Elvin Jones with John Coltrane and Tony Williams with the Miles Davis group were deeply affected by his novel conceptions.

What kept Haynes in an enviable position throughout his career was the fact that he gave more than constant variety to the two-bar, eight-beat cycle of 4/4 jazz swing. The rhythmic motives of each eight-bar section were improvised on as attentively as a pianist or a bassist toyed with chords. The upshot is that Haynes made the sound of the form—its dominant rhythmic motives—part of the color of the percussion accompaniment. Add the fact that Haynes inflects the flow of his drumming to complement the rhythmic identity of the featured soloist, and you have a fully conceived expression that arrives in every bar. No matter the style of the individual, this is the most advanced way to play the drums, which is to say the most musical, and is surely part of the reason why Roy Haynes has no date on the way he plays. It is and was always contemporary.

Stanley Crouch is the author of The Artificial White Man and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

https://jazztimes.com/features/roy-haynes-snap-crackle/

           

                                       

Roy Haynes: Snap Crackle

                       

0

By

                       

1

By

                       

2

By

                       

3

By

                       

4

By

                       

5

By

                       

6

By

                       

1 of 7      Next

                   

11/01/2005            

By Ashley Kahn 

 

                                           

Roy Haynes is slightly surprised by the comment. Of course there’s an erotic charge in the way he plays drums. “I’ve been noticing in the last 10 or 15 years, a lot of ladies come up after my performances,” he says. “Some of them say they never heard a drummer play like that.”

Youthful swagger and confidence still comes easily to the man who hit 80 this past March. Haynes talks it, walks it and wears it. His fashion sense, like his crisp and energetic drum work, has been part of his signature for decades-bassist Al McKibbon didn’t dub him “Snap Crackle” for nothing. “He’s the most stylish person in the room, at all times,” says Jeff “Tain” Watts. “He’s been that way for a long time. I read this stuff about him being in Esquire magazine back in the ’60s. Yeah-‘Snap Crackle,’ that says a lot.”

Like a well-tailored suit, the nickname Haynes has worn since the ’50s continues to fit him well. With a two-stick snare shot, Haynes can still bring a packed nightclub to immediate attention. It’s a trick he’s been using a lot this year while on the road with his Fountain of Youth band, one of today’s most exciting quartets. But if there’s one thing that can break Haynes’ cool-briefly-it’s his sudden status as an octogenarian.

“Eight zero? Man that’s unheard of,” he shakes his head with mock seriousness. “I didn’t know I would ever turn 80. But here it is. Just crept up on me.”

Of course, most of the jazz world has been ready, impatient even, to help mark Haynes’ milestone. Almost every Haynes gig in 2005 has involved a toast and a drum-shaped cake. “Even before my birthday,” the drummer recalls of his hometown, “the mayor in Boston made it ‘Roy Haynes Day.'”

On March 16, the day he turned 80, old friends like Chick Corea-and younger ones like Watts-flew to the Bay Area to celebrate with Haynes at Yoshi’s. Soon after, in New York City, the drummer had a week’s run at the Village Vanguard, and on its Sunday close Haynes’ fellow stickmen Jimmy Cobb, Ben Riley, Louis Hayes, Billy Hart and Kenny Washington all dropped by between sets. In New Orleans a few weeks later, Haynes stepped out from behind his kit with microphone in hand-a set-ending move he’s become known for-and acknowledged the cheers of the capacity JazzFest crowd. Back in New York City in mid-June, the Jazz Journalists Association declared him drummer of the year.

“It’s been pretty good,” Haynes says, “but I tell you, I try to take each day at a time. I dream a lot. I think a lot.” Snap Crackle chuckles for a moment and adds, “I just like to get on the bandstand and play.”

Roy Owen Haynes is old-school hip. He likes to use the term “too tough” in place of “very much.” In conversation, he can take charge, leading it in the direction he chooses, preferring the give-and-take of a good chat to an interview-an exercise he approaches guardedly. “Who’s this for?” he wants to be reminded before we speak. “What are we talking about?”

Haynes has been approached by “too many people out there who just want to know stuff. They got their questions, they get their answers, but they can’t get beyond that. You know I’m good when I’m performing late in the evening, when I’m into my instrument, I can have answers. If they have good ears and good imagination they can get it while I’m serving it. I don’t have to talk about it.”

One can understand the awe that must strike many who get a moment with the man. He is the legend who backed legends, a direct link back to Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Lester Young, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. As a leader, his albums are few, but most have become classics: Cymbalism, Out of the Afternoon, We Three. Over a celebrated 60-year career, he has become an ageless, energetic presence, continues to front lineups bursting with young talent and was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1995. That year marked the 50th anniversary of his arrival on the national jazz scene, when the Roxbury, Mass.-born native first played in New York City. It’s a story he never tires of telling.

“It was a Savoy-ballroom gig in September, 1945. I was playing in New England, Martha’s Vineyard to be exact, with a small band from around Boston. I got a special-delivery letter that came from [big band pioneer] Luis Russell, whom I had never met but he was hearing about me. I responded by sending a telegram telling him I was interested in joining the band but couldn’t join until after Labor Day. That was the start.”

World War II had just ended. The economy was jumping, and so was uptown.

“Harlem was roaring in those days. I had been to New York before because my brother was in the Army. We would come, my father and his wife, and spend time with him and go down to 52nd Street and that whole thing. But [in ’45] I was my own man and excited as heck!”

Before the decade ended Haynes became drummer of choice for large and small groups, joining headliners like Lester Young in ’47 and, two years later, Charlie Parker. “I was playing this so-called bebop, but I was a swing drummer and people were dancing while I was playing with Bird, for a little while, anyhow,” Haynes says. “From then to now, they’re not dancing too tough when I play. But just last summer or the summer before, I was in Harlem at the Charlie Parker festival. We were doing a ballad-something slow-and there was a guy out there dancing to it, making a lot of sense.”

It also makes sense Haynes focuses on dance as a way of measuring the progress of his career. Even as he left the ballrooms behind to play behind beboppers like Miles Davis, Kai Winding and Bud Powell, he maintained a giddy, dance-floor effect in his style. It’s there on many recordings from the early ’50s: I mention two piano-drum jump-ups-“Little Willie Leaps” and “Woody N’You”-on Powell’s Inner Fires LP, a live trio gig from ’53 that features the drummer and the pianist with Charles Mingus. Haynes recalls the date and his friend in his prime, before mental-health problems started dogging Powell.

“During that period Bud was in an institution. Sometimes he would go to the bridge several times-a lot of weird stuff. But I knew him before, in ’45, ’46, when we were all 20, 21 years old, before they had given him that shock treatment. That was a whole different Bud Powell. We used to play together a lot at Minton’s. I used to go by his house on 141st and St. Nicholas Avenue, and he’d play-he’d play. He was mucho fuego then, on fire!”

As the ’50s rolled on, Haynes honed his style. He became known for a melodic sense more associated with the timbales than a trap kit, and for a distinct, self-assured sound. Charles Mingus lauded him for his ability to suggest, rather than state, a beat. Tain Watts says Haynes “has a thing, playing over the time, where it feels like it’s free but it’s also grooving at the same time-like he has an internal clave or an African clock inside of him that makes it feel rooted. I’d say his fingerprints are definitely the cymbal beat-always pretty and relaxed, yet swinging very, very hard-and the sound of his snare drum, always crisp and high and dry, crackling and exciting.”

That sound has proved versatile, too. Haynes worked with Sarah Vaughan for five years, then joined Thelonious Monk from ’57 to ’59. By ’63 he began filling in for Elvin Jones in John Coltrane’s quartet, praised by the saxophonist for the way he “stretched the rhythm.”

“I just tried to fit in,” Haynes says. “One thing about all these different people, they were familiar with me, so I could just go in and do my thing, while listening all the time to what’s happening. I can’t really describe what I did too tough. I still just go by feeling.”

Through the ’60s, Haynes added his liberated approach to bands led by George Shearing, Kenny Burrell and Stan Getz, in whose lineup he first met a young pianist named Chick Corea, with whom he would repeatedly team up over the years. Asked to list his favorite sideman recordings, Haynes offers the tunes that others repeatedly mention.

“The one I hear about a lot is that ‘Shulie a Bop’ with Sarah Vaughan, which was in [1954]-where she introduces the trio in the song, and just before she says my name I say, “Bap!” And she says “Roy!” I say “Bap-bap-bap!” “Haynes!” That’s one of the ones. Then there’s one with Chick Corea, “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs,” that people still talk about all over the world. I was just in Paris a few days ago doing a master class, and naturally somebody brought the record with them. Then there would be 1963 at Newport: “My Favorite Things” with Coltrane, the 18-minute version. I didn’t even know that was going to be recorded at the time!”

Of his own favorite recordings as a leader, Haynes is quick to cite 1962’s “Out of the Afternoon, the one with [saxophonist] Rahsaan Roland Kirk, [pianist] Tommy Flanagan and [bassist] Henry Grimes. In fact, I got a royalty [payment] just today for it and went to the bank.”

Among Afternoon’s seven spirited tracks, a standout is “Long Wharf,” featuring Haynes vigorously skipping through a brisk set of changes and jaw-dropping breaks. Mention of the tune elicits a warm chuckle: “That’s one of my compositions, something I had developed with my group on the bandstand,” Haynes says. “Like the tune ‘Snap Crackle’ that’s on there, too. Other musicians called me that, and I always thought it’d be a good title, and I decided to do an introduction like ‘Shulie a Bop.’ That’s Tommy saying ‘Roy!’ and ‘Haynes!’ We tried it first with Rahsaan, but for some reason he was sort of spaced,” Haynes laughs.

Afternoon was a one-off album for Impulse, inspired by some club jamming.

“During that period I was playing at the Five Spot a lot,” Haynes says. “Rahsaan had recently come from Ohio or Chicago or someplace, and he had his own group on the same bill, and we were jamming a little. Henry worked with me quite a bit then and Tommy too. Those guys were kicking butt! We got excited about the idea of doing something together, so I took it to [Impulse head] Bob Thiele, and we did it. [Engineer] Rudy Van Gelder is a big part of that album as well; he got that great drum sound at his studio in New Jersey.”

Despite the satisfaction he found in his recordings as a leader, Haynes has balanced his sideman role with that of a headliner through most of his career. In 1970, he established his Hip Ensemble: a rotating, modernist lineup that often featured an electric keyboardist (like Stanley Cowell) or guitarist (Hannibal Peterson, Kevin Eubanks) and usually a saxophonist under the spell of Coltrane (John Klemmer, Ralph Moore, George Adams). As the ’80s arrived, he took on another project-forming the lean, hard-charging group the Trio with Chick Corea and Miroslav Vitous-and before the decade ended, served as big-name sideman behind Pat Metheny.

But it’s Haynes’ inclination to lead that has defined his career in recent years:

“I played with everybody,” he says. “But when I was trying to make them sound good, a lot of things I had in mind I didn’t do. I think it has a lot to do with me having my own project. Now I do anything I want to do with my own groups.”

In 2000 Haynes formed a trio with pianist Danilo Perez and bassist John Patitucci and recorded material for The Roy Haynes Trio (Verve) that drew from all phases of his varied career, including “Shulie a Bop.” A year later, he recruited an all-star lineup-trumpeter Roy Hargrove, bassist Dave Holland, saxophonist Kenny Garrett and pianist Dave Kikoski-for his Charlie Parker tribute, Birds of a Feather (Dreyfus). And in 2002 there was a stunning session, ultimately released on Columbia/Eighty-Eight’s as Love Letters, that featured guitarist John Scofield, tenor Joshua Redman and, alternately, pianists Kikoski or Kenny Barron and bassists Holland or Christian McBride.

But Haynes is most interested in talking about his current working quartet, Fountain of Youth, with saxman Marcus Strickland, pianist Martin Bejerano and bassist John Sullivan.

“I never expected the record Fountain of Youth on Dreyfus to be nominated for a Grammy,” he says. “They only nominate five-that’s a pretty great compliment. All the guys when we did the record were in their 20s. I was in my late 70s at the time. But when we get onstage we all become the same age.”

The band began to come together a few years ago, with Strickland’s self-introduction an important first step.

“I was at the Blue Note in New York one time when Milt Jackson had a big band there [in the late ’90s] and I was at the bar,” Haynes says. “Marcus comes in with these horns over his shoulders; he was only filling in for a player with Milt at the time. He came right up to me and said, ‘Roy Haynes, I want to play with you’-many years before we played together. I don’t usually have rules for getting into my band. Then Marcus recommended Martin-they’re both from Miami-and he recommended John on bass. That’s the connection there.”

The band has garnered a loyal and enthusiastic following in its short time together, often calling out for favorites like the group’s sly, shadowy reworking of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”

“I did that same tune with the Birds of a Feather band, only in the studio and then didn’t play it much,” Haynes says. “I decided we would start playing it, and every place we go it goes over. Even the ladies in Europe knew the title of it, and they knew the melody. I had them singing at the end of it at one point!”

There are moments of surprise and satisfaction in any Haynes performance, but especially with his current ensemble. The drummer leads the way, directing the shape and flow of a tune through his drum kit. “I’m like driving up there. I can feel it, and everyone is listening, seriously. I try to describe what I would like to hear with the instrument, not with words.”

“I am what I play,” he said at the close of a week-ending set at the Vanguard. Asked to expand on that thought, Haynes says, “I can’t describe that. I mean, if it’s true, if you’re really playing the truth, it’s you. There are a lot of people now who want to be drummers and they just go to school, but that’s not the drummer I know too much about. If you’ve been doing this thing as long as I’ve been doing it-man, it’s second nature! It’s my religion, it’s my life.”

Gearbox

Over the years, Haynes has played a traditional set of Ludwigs and sat behind a set of see-through Vistalites. He has been known to play a simple five-piece kit as well as an expanded set-up with a selection of pitched tom-toms, an array of temple blocks, percussion gadgets and a gong. These days, the master drummer leans toward a leaner kit-though the gong is still behind him.

Yamaha Maple Nouveau drums: 5 1/2 x 14 Roy Haynes Signature copper snare drum; 7 1/2 x 10 and 8 x 12 toms; 14 x 14 and 16 x 16 floor tom; 16 x 18 bass drum

Zildjian cymbals: 14-inch A Custom hi-hats; 18-inch A Custom crash; 20-inch K crash ride; 18-inch Custom flat-top ride; 17-inch K Dark Thin crash

Sticks: Zildjian Roy Haynes Artist Series wood tip

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/arts/music/roy-haynes-attention-getter-on-the-beat-and-off.html

Roy Haynes: Attention Getter, on the Beat and Off

by Ben Ratliff

March 10, 2006

New York Times

On the wall of his wood-paneled basement in his suburban Long Island home, the drummer Roy Haynes has a large poster of his idol, the Count Basie-band drummer Jo Jones. In the picture, taken in 1940, Jones stands outside of a building in a hat, suit and full-length overcoat, holding a cymbal with his left hand and a brush with his right. The stance is all casual defiance: Jones's feet are spaced apart, his chin and his eyebrows are raised. "He was the man," Mr. Haynes said. "And he carried himself like that."

A few summers ago Mr. Haynes invited four other drummers to his house in Baldwin, N.Y., where he lives alone. Mr. Haynes, Eddie Locke, Ben Riley, Louis Hayes and Jackie Williams ended up standing around the picture, drinking Champagne and talking about Papa Jo. More recently, early last month, Mr. Haynes had some visitors over to listen to CD's and talk about what he heard. Inevitably, Jones kept coming up.

Jonathan Jones, who died in 1985, made the high-hat significant in articulating jazz rhythm, and it has ever been thus. He played authoritatively with brushes, not just on ballads. He snapped down his patterns with subtlety and force; he ploughed powerful grooves for a band. He didn't get involved in long solos; above all, he had vitality, magnetism. One learned just by watching him move around. He was confident, and inspired some fear. He was proud of his "kiddies," the musicians he influenced. (He became known as Papa Jo in the late 1950's, in part to distinguish him from Philly Joe Jones, Miles Davis's drummer.) Toward the end of his life, he liked to perform sections of concerts on the high-hat cymbal alone.

Roy Haynes -- who will celebrate his 81st birthday by leading his young band at the Village Vanguard from Tuesday to Sunday -- never took a lesson from Jones. But Mr. Haynes has a whole area of technique around the high-hat, treating it as an instrument unto itself, building on Jones's principles. Really, he isolates every part of his drum kit in a similar way, letting it sing. He is naturally attention-getting, breaking up time, making his drum set react, hitting hard and then leaving space.

A musician isn't only what he plays. Jones approved of Mr. Haynes for his self-possession, too. Mr. Haynes bought his first car in the summer of 1950, the same week Miles Davis did. "Young jazz musicians buying cars was not heard of," he said, proudly. "Let alone a supposed bebop drummer." He now owns four; one is a Bricklin, the rare car with gull-wing doors, manufactured for only two years, in the mid-70's. And he likes some crackle in his leisure. When he comes into Manhattan and he's not working, he said, he often rents a limousine. "I'm like a little kid. I'm so excited, man. I just party, enjoy." He bought a second house in Las Vegas in 2001; he travels there every few months, and goes out to clubs and restaurants with his friends.

And the clothes. He often cites his inclusion in a list, created by Esquire magazine in 1960, of the best-dressed men in America. A musician in his 30's told me he met Mr. Haynes recently at the Vanguard. He mentioned to Mr. Haynes that he had just played there himself. "I was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, and my hair was dirty," he said. "Roy just looked me up and down. And then up, and then down again. He said, 'Huh.' "

Jo Jones was the natural place to start, and other subjects flowed from him. At the top of Mr. Haynes's list was "The World Is Mad" by Count Basie from 1940, with Jones on drums. But since all CD's that include it have gone out of print, I brought instead a Basie box set called "America's No. 1 Band!" since it covers that same period.

We listened to "Swing, Brother, Swing," which is about as good as American music gets. It comes from a radio broadcast in June 1937, recorded at the Savoy Ballroom in New York; it is the Basie orchestra with Jones on drums and Billie Holiday singing. The groove is vicious, menacing; as the band restrains itself for the first chorus and then gradually turns it on, the guitarist Freddie Green drives the rhythm, chunk-chunk-chunk, and Holiday phrases way behind the beat.

"Ra-rin' to go, and there ain't nobody gonna hold me down," she sings. Mr. Haynes, wearing velvet pants and cowboy boots, sat on his living-room sofa and crouched close to hear the details. "Can I hear that little part again?" he said. "I thought I heard a cowbell."

He did. Jones hits the cowbell three times at the start of the second chorus, linking the bars together. From that point the band surges a little, makes the song meaner. "Aaah-haaa!" Mr. Haynes hollered.

"That's a hell of a one to start with, man," Mr. Haynes said, shaking his head. "If anybody wants to know what swing is, check that out. Damn! Everybody's in the pocket. You know, you just feel it: I see people dancing."

Mr. Haynes played with the three greatest female singers in jazz: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. His time with Holiday came during her last run at a club, at Storyville in Boston, in 1959. Late Holiday is different: it communicates frailty; it's not rhythmically invincible, like this. "But there were still nights when some of that feeling was there," he said.

Mr. Haynes was born in Roxbury, Mass., where his parents had moved from Barbados; his father worked at Standard Oil in Boston. An older brother, Douglas Haynes, was a trumpet player who attended the New England Conservatory of Music in the late 1940's after his Army service; he traveled to New York when Roy was still in high school, and came to know musicians at the Savoy Ballroom. He introduced Roy to a number of them, including Papa Jo Jones, one night at the Southland Cafe, before Roy left Boston in 1945 for New York.

Mr. Haynes's next choice was "Queer Street," again by Basie. "There was a White Tower, a hamburger joint, on Broadway and 47th Street," he remembered as the song played. "They had a jukebox there. I would put dimes in, and keep playing it over and over." What he wanted to hear, he said, was Shadow Wilson's complicated two-bar fill on the snare drum near the end of the song.

Wilson later played more modern music, famously in a short-lived quartet with Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

"But I took him as a big-band drummer," Mr. Haynes said.

Max Roach is two years older than Mr. Haynes; they were two of the important drummers in bebop's first wave. "When I heard Max the first time," Mr. Haynes remembered, "I said to myself, He loves Jo Jones too."

We listened to Coleman Hawkins's recording of Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody 'n' You," from February 1944, written by Gillespie. It is considered the first bebop recording session. Gillespie is in the group, and Max Roach is the drummer. "I was impressed," he said of Mr. Roach. "It was like he was talking to me."

Mr. Haynes especially identified one detail: as Hawkins finishes his first solo in "Woody 'n You," Mr. Roach makes the final beat of the bar part of a figure that enjoins the bar with the next, and also the next chorus of the song. It breaks up the flow of time; it creates tension, and it stabilizes, too. Later in the song, during a trumpet solo, Mr. Roach thuds the bass drum, creating a single off-beat palpitation in the middle of a bar. "There," Mr. Haynes said.

This was from when bebop was just beginning to take over, and Mr. Haynes was in the middle of its creation. He saw some older musicians' dissatisfaction with the way jazz was changing then -- becoming more melodically fractured, more staccato, more drum-centered. But from 1947 to 1949, Mr. Haynes played with Lester Young, the paradigmatic soloist of the period before bebop, and had no problem. "I had heard Lester didn't like people getting too involved," he said. "But he liked the way I was getting involved. I was dancing with him from up here," he said, holding his hand up at the level of his head -- meaning the ride cymbal. "I was doing stuff with my left hand and right foot, too, but I was always feeding him that thing from up there. I was swinging with him. It wasn't particularly hard swinging; we were moving, you know, trying to paint a picture." Young approved.

He did something similar with Coltrane, when he filled in for Elvin Jones in the John Coltrane Quartet from 1961 to 1965. After you become used to Jones's drumming in the Coltrane group, hearing Mr. Haynes is a revelation: since the emphasis pulls away from the bass drum and toward the snare and cymbals, you can suddenly hear the bass and piano more.

It has become almost a cliché to compare Mr. Haynes's improvising to the sound of the timbales player in a Latin band, but Mr. Haynes has never talked much about Latin music. He had told me that he used to be friends with Ubaldo Nieto, the timbalero from Machito's orchestra. I suggested that we listen together to Machito's "Tanga," recorded at Birdland in 1951.

This "Tanga" changes its atmosphere several times, through switches of key or tension building from different sections of the bandstand. Then suddenly the entire language alters. Cuban rhythm becomes swing; hear a drum kit and cymbals instead of conga and timbales, and Zoot Sims starts playing a tenor saxophone solo. Mr. Haynes confirmed that it was Nieto, changing over to a drum kit mid-song.

"We were always playing opposite Machito in Birdland in those years," he said. "And I always did like the sound of timbales, the approach. Sometimes when I'd play my solos, I'd approach the traps with that same effect, like when I hit rim shots." (A rim shot means hitting the head and the rim of the drum at the same time.) "Older gentlemen like Chick Webb and Papa Jo, they did rim shots too. But doing it with no snares on, with that tom-tom sort of Afro-Cuban feeling, I always liked that."

Finally we listened to Vaughan singing "Lover Man," from 1945, with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. (The drummer is Sid Catlett.) It is what Mr. Haynes called a walking ballad, not as extravagantly slow as the kind he had in mind, like the version he recorded with Vaughan in 1954.

Mr. Haynes loved the five years he worked with Vaughan. She had impeccable timing, heard well enough to correct a bass player's chord changes and filled in on piano when necessary. She sang virtuosically onstage and hung out virtuosically with her band afterward. Mr. Haynes suffered his first hangover after going to an after-hours bar with her. (Philadelphia, 1953. Gordon's Gin.)

"She sang some of the slowest ballads, probably, in the world," he said. "And in the 50's, we had bass players like Joe Benjamin. Bass players in those days had a way of letting the notes ring out. We don't get that with a lot of young bass players today. With drumming, there was an art to playing it and making it sustained, making it sound full with brushes. But you've got to have the right rhythm section to make it sound effective. And we did, every night. Moment by moment, there was always something musical happening. And during that period, man, her voice was mmm. Uncanny."

He paused. "The memory of the whole time is cool. That was the first time I ever went to Europe. In Paris, we played with Coleman Hawkins and Illinois Jacquet on the same show. I backed up Coleman. And that was the first time I ever had my picture on the cover of a magazine. In Paris."

Swing and Power on the Playlist Recordings that Roy Haynes chose to listen to for this article:

Count Basie "Swing, Brother Swing," from "America's No. 1 Band!: The Columbia Years" (Sony Legacy, $44.98)

Count Basie "Queer Street," from "America's No. 1 Band!: The Columbia Years"

Coleman Hawkins "Woody 'n' You," from "Rainbow Mist" (Delmark, $12.98)

Machito and his Afro-Cubans "Tanga," from "Carambola" (Tumbao, $16.98)

Dizzy Gillespie, "Lover Man" (with Sarah Vaughan), from "Odyssey: 1945-52" (Savoy Jazz, $47.98)

Recordings featuring Mr. Haynes recommended by Ben Ratliff:

Sarah Vaughan "Swingin' Easy" (Emarcy, $11.99). Vaughan's swing and improvisational power in excelsis, from 1954, including the extra-slow "Lover Man."

Roy Haynes-Phineas Newborn-Paul Chambers "We Three" (OJC/Fantasy, $11.98). Finely detailed straight-ahead jazz from 1958, including "Reflection," with Mr. Haynes's Latin-influenced high-hat rhythm.

Chick Corea "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs" (Blue Note, $17.90). Mr. Corea's first album as leader. An uncanonized record, yet most younger jazz musicians know it backward and forward.

Pat Metheny "Question and Answer" (Geffen, available online from $14.75). One of Mr. Metheny's few straightforward jazz records, rhythmically strong, with a trio including Mr. Haynes and Dave Holland on bass.

'The Roy Haynes Trio' (Verve, $14.98). An effective self-portrait of Mr. Haynes's sound and history with a short-lived band, including the pianist Danilo Pérez and the bassist John Patitucci.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/jazzed-about-roy-haynes-95383611/

Jazzed About Roy Haynes

A robust 78, one of the greatest drummers of all time still riffs up a storm and wows fellow musicians

by Sam Stephenson

Smithsonian Magazine

December 2003

You may not have heard of Roy Haynes, but you have almost certainly heard him. In nearly 60 years as a jazz drummer, Haynes has appeared on some 600 recordings, many of them classics. With Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on 1951’s stirring “Night in Tunisia,” that’s Haynes popping the drums, cymbals and metal rims. With Sarah Vaughan on “He’s My Guy,” Haynes’ nimble swing complements her satiny voice. With Thelonious Monk on “ ’Round Midnight,” with John Coltrane on “Dear Old Stockholm,” with Lester Young, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Ray Charles and Chick Corea—on one historic recording after another, Haynes propels the music with an incomparable blend of spontaneous expression and sympathetic restraint. He is the “father of modern drumming,” says the guitarist Pat Metheny. Haynes, says Corea, is a “national treasure.”

But he’s no relic. Now 78, Haynes has averaged more than 50 live performances a year over the past three years, playing in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Istanbul, Madrid and many U.S. cities. He released a new compact disc this year, Love Letters, which Village Voice critic Gary Giddins described as “borderline miraculous,” marked by “heedless joy” and “unbridled enthusiasm.” Even Haynes is a bit surprised by all his energy. “When I was in my 20s,” he tells me, “I  couldn’t even imagine that I’d be 78 years old and still playing, performing and innovating like this. I read something recently where somebody said I was pushing 80 years old. I stepped back and said, 80? It’s hard for me to believe.”

Though Haynes has played with legends, and their music was often revolutionary, he remains largely unknown outside the jazz community. That is partly because of America’s curious taste for celebrities and fads, but also because of the way jazz history emphasizes stars and frontmen and overlooks sidemen, especially drummers and bassists. Then there’s the appealing myth of the solitary artist, which Haynes does not fit. He may play in four-limbed flurries with more activity and intricacy than any drummer before him, but his real art is communication. “The thing that sets Roy apart from other musicians is that he listens so well,” says the pianist McCoy Tyner, who played with Haynes in bands led by Coltrane in the early 1960s. “He teaches you to listen carefully and to respond accordingly, to put things in perspective, not to simply go out for yourself. He can do this in a quiet fashion accompanying singers or with those loose, powerful polyrhythms of his that are so magnificent.”

These days Haynes works primarily with two bands. One has stars in their 30s and 40s such as trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton, bassist Christian McBride and saxophonist Kenny Garrett. The other has four up-and-comers in their 20s. One night at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, after the young quartet played a blistering version of the Parker tune “Diverse,” Haynes staggered up to the microphone in a faux daze. “Daaaaaamn!” he exclaimed to the cheering crowd. “These guys are hot, aren’t they?” The musicians grinned. Haynes pointed to a wall-size poster of Parker (who died in 1955 at age 34) behind the stage and said, “You know, if Charlie Parker were to walk into this club right now and see me here playing with these guys who are 50 years younger than me, I think he’d smile. He’d dig it.”

Haynes, who has a shaved head and is not tall, has the lean, muscular body of a flyweight boxer and looks decades younger than he is. When he walks, he springs forward on his toes, and standing or sitting, he sways, shifts and squirms, restless as a kid. His laugh is robust and warm, and his mind is quick and can be challenging.

One July day, my friend Ward Hendon and I drove Haynes in our rented Taurus from Albany, New York, to a jazz festival 30 miles away in Saratoga Springs, where he would perform. Hendon, a New York City attorney who doesn’t usually hang out with musicians, attempted small talk while we were loading the car, asking Haynes if he’d remembered to bring his drumsticks. Haynes seemed flabbergasted: “What? Do I have my drumsticks? What do you mean? Would a painter forget his paintbrushes? I don’t understand?” He muttered in mock disgust at his decision to ride with us, and for the next half-hour ribbed Hendon. “Jeez, man, come on, can’t you come up with anything better than that? Did I remember my drumsticks?” Finally, Hendon blurted out, “Look, man, rookie mistake!” Haynes roared with laughter, satisfied that he’d at last provoked an honest expression.

That night, after Haynes walked off the stage to a standing ovation, he approached Hendon. “Nooooow you know where my drumsticks are,” he said with a wide grin.

Haynes’ directness is of a piece with his art. “Roy stays on the edge and that keeps him young,” says bassist Ed Howard, 43, who played with Haynes for 15 years until 1997. “He never lets up. He’s always pushing boundaries, challenging you, liv- ing in the moment. He changes you musically and personally. He strips away your self-consciousness and makes you comfortable with possible embarrassment. He prepares you for anything that might happen. Some nights onstage he’ll just take the microphone and give it to you and tell you to talk to the audience. You have to always be on alert.”

Haynes is one of the few musicians still performing whose origins touch the very roots of jazz. Growing up in the Boston area, he played in bands as a teenager before landing his first major gig in 1945 at age 20, in New York City, with Luis Russell’s big band. Russell had worked with the jazz pioneers King Oliver in the 1920s and Louis Armstrong in the 1930s. “Luis seemed impressed, and he believed in me,” says Haynes. “I’ll never forget one thing he told me. He said, ‘Anytime you get lost, just roll.’ That’s when I learned there isn’t a definite time with the music, just space. You didn’t have to play only time signatures, you didn’t have to hit the high-hat [cymbals] on two’s and four’s every time. You could be looser with the rhythms. But I also learned you had to have control and swing. Luis had a 17-, 18-piece band, and I had to have control to keep the band together.”

Roy Owen Haynes was born in the Roxbury section of Boston in 1925, the third of Gustavus and Edna Haynes’ four children, all sons. His parents had moved to the area from Barbados in the West Indies. His father worked for Standard Oil Company and liked to tinker with cars. His mother was a deeply religious churchgoer who did not allow secular music in the house on Sundays. Haynes’ oldest brother, Douglas, served in the U.S. Army in World War II and died less than a decade after coming home. Another older brother, Vincent, who was a photographer, football coach and civic leader in Roxbury, died this past June at age 82. Haynes’ surviving brother, Michael, 76, has been senior minister at Roxbury’s landmark Twelfth Baptist Church since 1964 and served three terms in the Massachusetts state legislature.

Haynes was introduced to music early. “My father sang in a choir and played organ,” he says. “We had an organ in our house when I was growing up. As a kid I was banging on everything around the house until I got a set of drums. I also studied violin, but I was a natural drummer, as they said in those days. My older brother Douglas was not a professional musician, but he was a student of music and he knew a lot of musicians. In the late 1930s he was a roadie for Blanche Calloway, who was Cab Calloway’s sister.” Douglas introduced Haynes to one of his heroes, Count Basie’s drummer Jo Jones, when he was still a teenager. “Jo’s drums on the Basie record The World is Mad turned me on. When I heard it, I really knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

In 1947, at 22, Haynes left Russell’s band and moved on to legendary saxophonist Lester Young; after two years, he briefly played with Bud Powell and also Miles Davis before joining up with Charlie “Bird” Parker, with whom he played for three years. “Roy was different,” saxophonist Sonny Rollins, 73, recalls of the early years. “He was able to accompany Parker in the most wonderful way. He had his own sound and his own methods. I remember one night in particular when they were opening at some place in Greenwich Village opposite Art Tatum. It was the great Charlie Parker and the great Art Tatum on one bill.” Haynes remembers the night. “That was at the Café Society in 1950,” he says, adding: “Billie Holiday sat in with us. Ray Bolger was there and sat in with us too. He was the Broadway dancer who played the Scarecrow in the movie The Wizard of Oz. He performed a few soft-shoe numbers while we played. Can you imagine?” Those were jazz’s golden years, before rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues splintered the audience, a period of constant innovation that gave rise to, among other things, bebop. Haynes was in the forefront. Traditionally, jazz drummers had been relegated to rote timekeeping—ding-chicka-ding-chicka-ding. But Haynes, along with other drum pioneers such as Jo Jones, Sid Catlett, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, helped free the drums. Haynes extracted the rhythmic qualities from melodies and created new drum and cymbal patterns—ding-chicka-pop-snap-chicka- tick-boom-ding. Rather than using the cymbals as mere decorative accents, Haynes made them central to his rhythmic approach. His unique sound earned him the nickname Snap Crackle.

Haynes’ work in the late 1940s and early ’50s—heard on tunes such as Lester Young’s “Ding Dong,” Parker’s “Anthropology,” Powell’s “Bouncing with Bud” and Davis’ “Morpheus”—inspired a generation or two of artists. “Roy may have been the first avant-garde jazz musician, in terms of his freedom with the rhythms,” says the drummer Billy Hart, 63. “He was so far in the future, way ahead of his time, but he was natural and traditionally grounded too.”

A measure of Haynes’ free-spiritedness is that in 1952 he turned down the drum chair in Duke Ellington’s band, perhaps the most influential jazz orchestra in history. “I was with Bird and we’d just finished playing a concert at Carnegie Hall, which was a double bill with Duke. I was living in the President Hotel on 48th Street, and Duke called me there. We just talked about a lot of things, my music, his music. But this new music was happening at the time, and I knew that if I went with Duke’s band, there would have been some problems with some of the older members who weren’t so hip to the new thing. Duke himself could deal with it, I’m sure, or else he wouldn’t have wanted me.

“From then on,” Haynes continues, “I would run into Duke at different parties and restaurants, and he would always remind me that I didn’t join his band. He would make a joke of it. I thought it was so beautiful that he would do that. I remember one time I saw him in Washington, D.C. back during the Johnson administration. One of Johnson’s secretaries was into jazz, and she would have these parties at her house. One night I was arriving at a party as Duke was leaving, and he mentioned it then too—that I didn’t join his band. It must have been nearly 20 years later. So, that respect and that love, I felt like I was a part of Duke Ellington’s thing, even though, you know, I wasn’t.”

Haynes joined Sarah Vaughan’s band in 1953 and stayed with her for five years. An expressive musician can sometimes be stymied accompanying a singer, but Haynes finetuned his improvisations. “Sarah sang the slowest ballads of any singer, so I had to be patient,” says Haynes. “But I also love lyrics and I love beautiful melodies, so I enjoyed listening to her while I was playing.” Haynes’ work on Vaughan’s classic 1954 albums Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown and Swingin’ Easy are masterpieces of complementary drumming. “The first thing Roy gives you is a sense of taste,” Tyner says. “Even when he’s giving you those loose, free rhythms that are so extraordinary, he’s still listening to you and being tasteful and lyrical. It’s awfully hard to describe how he achieves that balance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he learned how to do it while he was accompanying Sarah.”

During his years with Vaughan, Haynes bought a duplex in Hollis, Long Island, where he and his wife, Jesse Lee Nevels Haynes, raised two sons and a daughter. All three, now grown, still live in that same duplex with their respective families. (Haynes moved to another home on Long Island after his wife died in 1979. He has not remarried.) The middle-class nature of Haynes’ family, like that of his parents, disavows the stereotype of the tumultuous, dissipated, often tragic lifestyle that is so much a part of jazz mythology.

But Haynes has been one of the hippest cats in the suburbs. From his father he inherited a taste for fine cars and custom- made clothes. Today, he owns a 1974 Brickland, a 1990 custom El Dorado, a 1998 El Dorado and a 2001 CL500 Mercedes Benz. “My first car was a convertible Oldsmobile Ninety- Eight that I bought in the early 1950s at the same time Miles Davis bought his first car, which was a Dodge convertible,” he says. “Miles and I used to race our cars through Central Park at night with our tops down. I remember Miles used to tell girls”—he mimics Davis’ famous hoarse whisper—“‘Me and Roy Haynes, we like to race around Central Park smashing up our cars.’ It was a wild, hip time.” In 1960, Esquire ranked Haynes as one of the best-dressed men in America, along with Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and Cary Grant.

Haynes left Vaughan’s band in 1958, and his work over the next decade was documented on dozens of influential recordings. By now, he had mostly dispensed with bar lines—the musical measurements that dictate a song’s structure—and interacted with his band mates even more freely. Previously, drummers generally waited until the end of 16 bars to play a “fill,” a pattern of drum figures. But Haynes would put a fill anywhere. “Before Roy, you could always distinctly hear the break when a drummer switched from keeping time to improvising a dialogue with the other musicians,” says drummer Victor Lewis, 53. “Roy blurred the border. It was revolutionary. To be able to play as freely as Roy without disrupting the flow—while actually swinging like hell—is walking a fine line. He found a way to do it better than anybody else.” Another uncanny Haynes feat is to project his sound without being loud. His percussion seems to well up from all corners of a room. That may be difficult or impossible to hear on recordings, but seldom fails to impress musicians who share the bandstand with him or hear him live. “What Roy has as a musician is a very, very special thing,” says drummer Jack DeJohnette, 61. “The way he tunes his drums, the projection he gets out of his drums, the way he interacts with musicians onstage: it’s a rare combination of street education, high sophistication and soul.”

As it is with many innovators, the initial reception to Haynes was mixed. In the spring of 1958, while he was playing with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot Cafe in Manhattan, saxophonist Johnny Griffin took Coltrane’s place in the band. Griffin, who would move to Europe in 1963, remembers his first time playing with Haynes. “The band was cookin’, but Roy was busier than most drummers back then, and I wasn’t used to it,” Griffin, 75, says on the phone from his home in France. “Coming off the stage one night, I said to Thelonious, ‘Man, your drummer here, doing that ding-aling- a-ding-a-ling-a, don’t you think your drummer is a little bit too busy back there?’ Thelonious just looked at me. Then he finally said, ‘Hmmmmm, if you don’t like it, you talk to him yourself.’ ”

“I went out back and found Roy,” Griffin goes on. “I said, ‘Roy, man, you know, this ding-a-ling-a-ding-a-ling-a. Don’t you think you might be just a bit too busy, man?’ Well, Roy just blew up on me. He went off. He said, ‘Why, I played with Charlie Parker, I played with Lester Young, I played with Bud Powell, I played with Sarah Vaughan, I played with all these cats and nobody ever complained about my playing.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, Roy. Please forget I said anything.’ ”A few nights later, Monk, Griffin, bassist Ahmed Abdul- Malik and Haynes were in the kitchen in between sets, and Monk, an oracular figure known in the jazz world as a man of few words, revisited the subject. “Thelonious started rubbing his chin whiskers like he was going to say something,” Griffin recalls. “He sat back and kept rubbing his whiskers. Then, he said, ‘Hmmmm, Johnny Griffin ain’t scared of Roy Haynes.’ That’s all he said. We all looked around at each other. Then, we all broke out hysterically laughing. It was the funniest thing.

“Once I got used to what Roy was doing, I realized how wonderful it was,” Griffin says. “He was completely different from anybody else. The slightest idea of anything on the bandstand would set him off on a different rhythmic and percussive course, but he always swung so damn hard. It was quite beautiful, and Thelonious loved it. He would say, ‘Roy is like an eight ball right in the side pocket.’ ”

“Haynes defines the Monk experience,” says Hart, recalling the live recordings that Haynes made in Monk’s band (with Griffin) in 1958, released as Monk’s albums Misterioso and Thelonious in Action. “He shared Monk’s vision for both tradition and originality. Roy’s improvisations on those records are true genius, so lyrical, so melodic, but also so advanced. It’s like he could see into the future. If you take the music he made with Monk and add the music he made with Coltrane and Chick Corea in the 1960s, you’ve got the whole range of American music history wrapped up in one man, Roy Haynes. That much genius . . . it’s hard to imagine. I normally don’t talk like this, but I mean every word of it.”

Haynes’ influence has reverberated through several generations of drummers. The novelties that confounded Johnny Griffin nearly five decades ago have been rubbed smooth by familiarity. The marvel is that the septuagenarian Haynes still wows cutting-edge musicians. In 1997, he cut short a vacation in Barbados to fill in for Tony Williams nine days after Williams died at age 51. The gig, slated for the Catalina Bar & Grill in Los Angeles, was going to be canceled. But when Haynes agreed to fill in, the trio’s other members, pianist Mulgrew Miller and bassist Ira Coleman, decided to play.

Jim Keltner, an L.A. session drummer for 35 years, attended the performance with Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones. “Charlie and I could not believe our eyes and ears,” says Keltner, 61. “It was magical. I was focused on Roy, and I noticed that he wasn’t playing the high-hat at all, . . . just playing ride [cymbal] and snare [drum]. It was so free, so mesmerizing, just watching him be so loose and relaxed. I’d never heard a trio play like that in my life. You wish that people who don’t know anything about jazz had been there. It was very powerful.”

“It was one of the greatest musical experiences of my life,” says Miller, 48. “I had never played with Roy before, and I was a little apprehensive, but after the first eight bars of the first tune I just smiled and said to myself, ‘This is going to be all right.’ ” Coleman, 47, adds: “It felt like we were dancing up there. I’ll never forget how visually present Roy was. He kept constant eye contact with us, as opposed to a lot of other players who close their eyes or sink into themselves. He was looking at us and smiling at us the whole time. It meant, ‘I am listening to you, I hear you.’ ”

Roy Haynes is receiving some of the acclaim due him from a wider audience. In 2002, he was honored with two nights of tribute concerts at LincolnCenter in New York City. This past March, Haynes’ 78th birthday bash was held at the Blue Note, the famed Manhattan jazz club. Flowers and gifts filled his dressing room. Many notables showed up—pianist Cecil Taylor, drummer Andrew Cyrille, saxophonist Joe Lovano. Also present were Haynes’ grown children: Graham, a cornetist, Craig, a drummer, and Leslie Haynes Gilmore, a legal secretary. Her son, Marcus Gilmore, then 16, played a drum solo as his grandfather stood offstage smiling proudly. “That was my best birthday present,” Haynes says.

Musically and physically, Haynes seems to resist the passage of time. Backstage at the jazz festival in Saratoga Springs, singer Cassandra Wilson quizzed him about his diet and exercise habits, wanting to know how he stayed so fit and vibrant. Haynes, sporting a visor and dark sunglasses, only mentioned a ten-speed bicycle that he rides “once in a while.”

When I ask Haynes about his music, he is hardly more forthcoming. “My music grows, but it doesn’t change,” he says. “I try to find ways to sort of fit the atmosphere whenever I am playing. To me, music is music. I go by the feeling of what I enjoy and what I like to do. I try to stay fresh. When leaves come out on the trees each season, they are new leaves. They are the same leaves, but they are really not.” Haynes pauses. “That’s all I’ll say. I’m not the kind of person who likes to analyze, analyze, analyze. I mean, you are sitting here with a guy who has been playing this music for 60 years. Man, that’s something, you know?”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/jazzed-about-roy-haynes-95383611/#hYkzaDcsjpdMwFg5.99

Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv

Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/interview-roy-haynes-jazz-drumming-giant

Interview: Roy Haynes, Jazz Drumming Giant

The 86-year-old jazz legend reminisces, from Satchmo to now

by Nick Hasted
18 November 2011

Roy Haynes: the Best-Dressed Man of 1960 stays sharp in the 21st century

The man who played with everyone, Roy Haynes earned his Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Grammys, in a career even his 86 years hardly make credible. He was 21 when he got the call to drum for Louis Armstrong in 1946. He was at the drum stool as Billie Holiday played her last club gig, crying at the pain of her dying body. Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Archie Shepp and Pat Metheny are among the names who’ve enjoyed his sympathetic touch. When he was named one of Esquire’s Best-Dressed Men of 1960, Fred Astaire and Clark Gable were on the list. But Haynes is no lucky Zelig figure. The music’s giants have wanted Haynes because, to some, he’s the greatest jazz drummer ever.

He plays the London Jazz Festival on Friday, as he mostly does these days, with his Fountain of Youth band - named as a nod to the Haynes who on their 2006 album Whereas looks a trim and muscular super-fit 60, and still drums with urgent imagination. When I call him at his New York home, he’s impatient with questions he deems stupid, a man not about to waste time suffering fools now.

The Boston Haynes (pictured left) was born into in 1925 made him worldly. “Man, I lived across the street from a synagogue,” he recalls. “We had Irish people living on one side of the house and French-Canadian on the other. I didn’t just grow up in a slum area of all black people. I knew a little bit about life, and a little bit about people. Early, at a young age.” So when he first went to New York’s 52^nd Street in 1942, he was braced for what was then the jazz world’s hectic heart. “They had clubs next door to each other, I mean on both sides of the street,” he vividly recalls. “When I saw the names of some of the people - Billie Holiday was here, Art Tatum was there, Charlie Parker - oh-ho. I went back every time I was in New York. I didn’t drink then. But you could stand at the bar and have one Coca-Cola for 75 cents. And I’d sip on that Coca-Cola for an hour, and listen. An older brother had all the records, he knew who was great, and I would go and see these people; 52^nd Street was like going to heaven.”
Those now legendary labs for jazz’s postwar revolutions were just small basement rooms in old brownstone buildings, Haynes recalls, strictly listening-room only. But he caught the tail-end of jazz when it was for dancing, too, after brass-heavy big bands were first built up to be heard, barely amplified, in massive Southern warehouse parties of the Thirties, a precise premonition of rave. “My first job when I came to New York to live was in Harlem at the Savoy Ballroom,” he says. “That was a dance hall, ‘the home of the Happy Feet’. That was a big band, 17, 18-piece. I had a taste of all that for two years, before I played with Lester Young and Charlie Parker. The fundamental of the big band was you had to swing. I was a swing drummer before I even heard the word bebop. Swing’s still what comes out of my playing.”

Haynes often played those basement brownstones with Charlie Parker (pictured right) in the years just after the war when the saxophonist helped forge bebop. But Haynes’s longevity may have been helped by a mostly abstemious lifestyle very different from Parker’s deadly heroin addiction. Was it hard dealing with the behaviour that came with the music? “Well, I guess it probably was a little difficult,” he considers, “but the man was such a great genius, lots of times that didn’t even enter my mind, man. On the bandstand when he’s playing, that’s a different period. If I had to be with him steady - I mean, Charlie Parker didn’t work that steady. But naturally it would touch me.”
Clint Eastwood’s 1988 Bird biopic emphasised the miasmic, heroin-haunted side of Parker’s life. But the cheeky schoolboy grin in photos of him was one Haynes saw often. “Looks a little devilish? Heheheh! Well, he had a lot of devil in him! I guess a lot of us, whether we had those kinds of problems in life or not, had devilness in us. Heroin was his problem, nothing to do with me. Not to say that I never tasted it. I know in the Seventies, some guy was supposed to bring me something, and it ended up being pure heroin. And I felt that shit down to my ankles. I mean, my God. But Charlie Parker was shooting heroin, and from what I understand everything was pure back then. And a lot of kids today in college are taking it and dying of overdoses, Caucasian kids. So that’s how hip Charlie Parker was,” he wryly concludes.

You can hear the range in Haynes’s own artistry in his delicate brushwork behind night-bird scat-singer Sarah Vaughan, his main employer for five years after leaving Parker in 1953, rated higher artistically than the more iconic Holiday by the man who felt them both breathe, sweat and sing mere feet away; and then in the way he goes toe-to-toe alone for 12 minutes with the saxophone’s ultimate colossus, Coltrane, on 1963’s classic Live at Newport. Keeping pace as Coltrane screams and soars into uncharted terrain, Haynes waits to drive each climax on. But Elvin Jones was Coltrane’s usual drummer, as Max Roach was on record for Parker. It’s left Haynes a footnote in some jazz histories - which clearly smarts as, unbidden, he tells a long story of how he taught Jones. “John [Coltrane] said, ‘They both have a way of spreading the rhythm,’” Haynes concludes. He contemplates his subtle art. “I still hear things as I go [when playing], things that I had never thought of before. When someone else is playing a solo, I am decorating it, with things that come to my mind, things I hear. You know everything is not at one volume. Everything is not ROCK-bom-bom-bam-boom. I’m not a drummer that has chops continuously - bbrrr-rrr-rrrr-rrr all the time. I never could do that, I’m not interested. I paint pictures, I tell stories. That’s my idea.”
Talking about jazz’s lost legends of half a century ago, it’s chastening to recall the apartheid-style America they played in. In this land of the free, the nation’s greatest musician, Miles Davis, was beaten half to death by a cop for being “uppity”. “There are certain things that happened - that happen now - but the music is so great, a lot of things didn’t bother me,” Haynes reflects. “England hasn’t always been the greatest neither. My mother and father were from Barbados, which was ruled by the British – yeah,… if you wanna go there. But people who enjoy what you do, to them it’s like a religion. And that’ll carry you through a lot."

I paint pictures, I tell stories. That’s my idea Haynes has always enjoyed good cars and clothes, as that Esquire Best-Dressed Men list noticed. “Miles and me were the only blacks who were mentioned in that,” he says. “That’s just a part o’ life. I dress for a hobby. Back in the day, when I was with Sarah Vaughan and Stan Getz, I had to wear a suit. Things change. A lot of people from your country come on stage with jeans, they’re making big money and they’re looking funky and shit! Look at Mick Jagger, you know about that. I used to go to Carnaby Street, is that still there?”
Yes - but it’s not what it was. “I know it’s not, ain’t nothing’s like it was!” he laughs, with the glee of a man who’s seen most things come and go. “I’m Roy Haynes and I’m in my eighties, but I’m still fashionable. I’m an inventor musically, and the way I look. And to have played with Louis Armstrong (pictured below), from Louis to Pat Metheny. I mean, what other drummer has done anything like that? That in itself is something to think about, man.”

Haynes played with Armstrong in October 1946, hurrying across Harlem to fill a vacancy on the bus to tour tobacco warehouses across the Deep South. Later, in Chicago, he sat and listened as the genial Satch told dirty jokes. But it’s Armstrong near the end of his life who comes to mind talking to Haynes, the Satch spoken to by Studs Terkel backstage at some Chicago dive he should not have been back at, aged 62 and weary to his soul. I read Haynes what he said: “A man my age ain’t looking for no new world. Just get somewhere and live a beautiful life. You know, relax. Because after 62 years you don’t have too many more, you know. Just relax...[touring] wears you down. Gets so I can’t do it no more. Had a good career, 50 years. Pretty nice.”
“How old was he then?” Haynes says. “Because I was always thinking people were older, when they died. Because my brother in Boston was telling me you’ve outlived your father, you’ve outlived your uncle and all your other brothers. And it makes me stop and think. And I want to cry then.”
But he won’t weep for long. Twenty-four years older than Armstrong when his titanic career caught up with him in that Chicago dressing room, Roy Haynes is still eager for music; still the best drummer in the room.

• Roy Haynes plays the Royal Festival Hall, London, 18 November at 7.30pm, and is interviewed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London at 6pm

Watch a clip from A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story

http://www.bluenote.com/artists/roy-haynes

Artists - Roy Haynes               

Recording period between           

1949-1987

                                   

A veteran drummer long overshadowed by others, but finally in the 1990s gaining recognition for his talents and versatility, Roy Haynes has been a major player for half a century. He worked early on with the Sabby Lewis big band, Frankie Newton, Luis Russell (1945-1947), and Lester Young (1947-1949). After some engagements with Kai Winding, Haynes was a member of the Charlie Parker Quintet (1949-1952); he also recorded during this era with Bud Powell, Wardell Gray, and Stan Getz. Haynes toured the world with Sarah Vaughan (1953-1958); played with Thelonious Monk in 1958; led his own group; and gigged with George Shearing, Lennie Tristano, Eric Dolphy, and Getz (1961). He was Elvin Jones' occasional substitute with John Coltrane's classic quartet during 1961-1965, toured with Getz (1965-1967), and was with Gary Burton (1967-1968). In addition to touring with Chick Corea (1981 and 1984) and Pat Metheny (1989-1990), Haynes has led his own Hip Ensemble on and off during the past several decades. When one considers that he has also gigged with Miles Davis, Art Pepper, Horace Tapscott, and Dizzy Gillespie, it is fair to say that Haynes has played with about everyone. He led dates for EmArcy and Swing (both in 1954), New Jazz (1958 and 1960), Impulse (a 1962 quartet album with Roland Kirk), Pacific Jazz, Mainstream, Galaxy, Dreyfus, Evidence, and Storyville. In 1994, Haynes was awarded the Danish Jazzpar prize, and two years later, he received the prestigious French Chevalier des l'Ordres Artes et des Lettres. In the late '90s, Haynes formed a trio with pianist Danilo Perez and bassist John Pattitucci, and they released their debut album, The Roy Haynes Trio Featuring Danilo Perez & John Pattitucci, in early 2000 on Verve. Haynes' son Graham is an excellent cornetist. Haynes paid tribute to Charlie Parker in 2001 with Birds of a Feather, his fourth release for the Dreyfus Jazz label, which was subsequently nominated for a Grammy in 2002; Fountain of Youth followed two years later. Also released in 2004, Quiet Fire compiled two of his prior releases for Galaxy (1977's Thank You Thank You and 1978's Vistalite) into one back-to-back record. Whereas appeared in mid-2006, and it earned Haynes a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. ~ Scott Yanow

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/roy-haynes-roy-haynes-by-aaj-staff.php

Roy Haynes   

by AAJ STAFF    

March 19, 2003               

by Dan King

AllAboutJazz   

“Every time I get on the bandstand, it's going to be something different. I want to do something that I've never done before. “   

--Roy Haynes                              

Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie have many things in common - one of which is Roy Haynes. The drummer has played with these and other jazz giants during his 77 years as a percussive powerhouse. He turns 78 on March 13th, and the jazz world celebrates at New York City's Blue Note for a week when Haynes performs with saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Dave Kikoski, and bassist Scott Colley. On the occasion of his birthday - a personal milestone and cultural moment -AllAboutJazz- New York met with Haynes to discuss his romance with rhythm, thoughts on the past, and plans for the future. Haynes started off the interview responding to our initial question of what he feels is most important to him.

Roy Haynes: Breathing, getting up, feeling good. Sometimes I may be playing drums and I feel like it's therapy. I like fresh air, being around interesting people, talking about interesting things - not just ABCD, like a lot of music today.

All About Jazz: Many people consider you jazz royalty - an energetic personality.

RH: I do what I do. I've been semi-retired now for the last couple of months. It can get boring, not playing. I read about myself once and it said, "When Roy walks, he walks with rhythm." I feel like that. When I ride trains, I deal with sounds - 'chugga chugga chugga chugga'.

AAJ: Tell me about some of the percussive pianists you've played with.

RH: Chick Corea's very percussive. Monk was interesting to play with. I like that kind of challenge, and playing with Monk was definitely a challenge. Monk had a lot of rhythm - in fact, one of his tunes was called "Rhythm-a-Ning" - but Chick's probably more percussive.

AAJ: What are some of your aims as a performer?

RH: You gotta be real. I'll talk to somebody from onstage and they'll respond, and I'll make them feel more comfortable, or myself feel more comfortable. That's great. There may be somebody who's not familiar with what you're doing musically. I've got a lot of people saying, "I've never heard a drummer play like that."

AAJ: Your family's very musical.

RH: All my children play, except my daughter. She really wanted to be a singer, but she has children - very talented children, including Marcus, who plays the drums, and another older than Marcus, Leah. They both go to school in Manhattan. Leah plays bassoon. She's very good. My son Graham plays trumpet, flugelhorn, and clarinet. Right now, he's doing music for a film that will be on PBS.

AAJ: What do you think some of the tasks ought to be of jazz critics? What makes a critic responsible, or irresponsible?

RH: Naturally, when a musician plays a concert or does a recording, his heart and soul - if he's for real - is in it, so when he reads critical things of what he's trying to do, it can affect him. Writers like to write like they know everything, but you can't know everything. I wouldn't want to be a critic, but sometimes when I read what they write about me, I learn more about myself, because I don't know the way it's coming over. I've been fortunate. Most of my reviews have been favorable. I couldn't speak for a lot of other artists, but it's inspiring to get a great review.

AAJ: You've recently been playing with John Patitucci, Danilo Perez, and others. Any particular direction you want to take your music?

RH: Every time I get on the bandstand, it's going to be something different. I want to do something that I've never done before. There must be something to what I'm doing to have people like Charlie Parker feel something and want to be part of it. There's something there, and I don't necessarily want to analyze what it is, but naturally it makes me feel good. I don't want to pin it down. I think it's speaking for itself.

AAJ: What goes through your mind before gigs. Are there any routine thoughts before performing?

RH: When I'm going to play anywhere, we're lighting a fire before we get there. Sh*t, f*ck it. I'm going to kick their ass on the drums! That's the language I speak. You know, with my bands, I try to get somebody who understands what I'm doing without me always having to describe it. I don't like to tell people what I think they should do, or what to do. Telling someone how to live? I don't know. Just one day at a time.

AAJ: With your birthday coming up, what can we expect?

RH: I'll have with me at the Blue Note - helping to celebrate my birthday - Joshua Redman. There was an article in the Village Voice once, where they were asking different artists who they thought was impressive during that last year, and they had a photo of me in it, with quotes from Joshua Redman. When I read the things Joshua had said, it actually brought tears to my eyes. We had played together in Europe with Pat Metheny and Chick Corea when we had the Remembering Bud Powell band. You never know what influence people are getting from you. I learn more about myself - thing's I didn't realize. Maybe something you see about my playing - or something you see in me - that I don't know about. I'm just going along; just moving. There's no telling what may happen next'Sometimes I meet somebody in a store who's read a little about me, and I'll say, "Why don't you come to the performance tonight. You might get something out of it. If you get a feeling within yourself about what's going on, that's a start." I had a lady once in Chicago standing in the lobby as people [were] leaving, and she said that listening to my music reminded her of the four seasons. That got to me, and I knew she had to be somebody. That's how I try to play - a little of this and a little of that.

AAJ: The list of celebrity musicians you've played with is almost endless - Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. What did it feel like in diners, on the road, in buses

RH: You can't even really say what it was like. At one point, Coltrane was just another musician in the club, not even realizing that he was going to develop into what he did. He was a rather good friend musician. We're all just human beings trying to play the music. I became part of that, and I've been very fortunate to live this long and to play and innovate...It's important not to do the vices. Don't even overdue eating. I don't know if that has anything to do with my living to be 78, but moderation's important. A little exercise, too. What advice do I tell my grandson? I listen to him.

http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/A_F86ED3A49402475BB375AF7D7CD328BC

Eric in The Evening:  Roy Haynes

Part of From the Vault. Part of Eric Jackson's Radio Legacy.

8/17/1994

(Audio link above)

Roy Haynes Interview Highlights: Roy Haynes mentions his early professional years in Boston. Roy Haynes comments on his sons who are musicians: Craig, a percussionist and Graham, a trumpeter. Roy Haynes reflects on his recordings with Chick Corea. Roy Haynes reflects on one of his experiences while performing with Charlie Parker in 1950. Roy Haynes reflects on his time performing with Lester Young aka ‘Prez’ in the mid 1940’s. Roy Haynes reflects on leading a band with Sonny Rollins and his time with Sarah Vaughn. Roy Haynes reflects on the unauthorized use of wire recorders to capture Charlie Parker performances. Roy Haynes provides reflections on his filling in with John Coltrane. (Editor’s note: Recording captures interview in progress. Eric and Roy are discussing Haynes new cd at the time, titled Homecoming.) Summary and select metadata for this record was submitted by Leonard Brown. Beginning in 1969, Eric Jackson hosted multiple jazz radio shows airing from various Boston based radio stations. He moved to WGBH in 1977 as host for “Artists in the Night”. In 1981, Eric created his own show, “Eric in the Evening”, which now airs on WGBH radio.

THE MUSIC OF ROY HAYNES: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH ROY HAYNES:

A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story 

(Boxed Set Documentary): 

Published on October 8, 2007:

Film by Doug Yoel. Excerpted from the 45 minute program included in the LIFE IN TIME boxed set.  http://www.amazon.com/Life-Time-Hayne... "Best Boxed Sets of 2007" - The New Yorker Winner - 2008 Jazz Journalist Award - "Best Boxed Set" Winner - Best Historical Recording - 2008 Victoires Du Jazz (French Grammy) Interview with then 82-year-old jazz legend from his award winning boxed set, "A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story". Includes rare performance footage. Roy discusses his life and career, sharing stories about Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane, and more. 

Roy Haynes--"Blue 'n Boogie--April 1973--Charlie Parker Festival Tribute concert:

Roy Haynes Quartet--'Out of the Afternoon'--1962:


Roy Haynes with the Booker Ervin Quintet--Cracklin'
(Full album):

Roy Haynes--Extended Drum Solo--1966:

Roy Haynes--20 Greatest Hits:

 

Chick Corea Trio with Roy Haynes and Miroslav Vitous--"Now He Sings, Now He Sobs":
 

  
Roy Haynes Trio--"We Three" with Paul Chambers and Phineas Newborn, Jr.--1958:

Roy Haynes Ensemble--Live on Italian TV--1973 and 1976:
 

Roy Haynes Quartet and Chick Corea--Jazz Baltica--2005:
 

  
Roy Haynes Trio--"Solar"--2000:

Roy Haynes--Modern Drummer--2005:
 

Roy Haynes--Up Close and Personal--Interview 2012:

http://www.midatlanticjazzfestival.org presents an in-depth talk with Jazz percussion legend Roy Haynes, with Nasar Abadey, at the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival. Roy talks about his first drum set, how he never played with Duke Ellington's Orchestra, gigging with Charlie Parker and Lester Young, and other memories, as well as offering some of his tap dancing expertise. 

Roy Haynes with the Chick Corea Freedom Band--2016:

 

Roy Haynes Quintet in Spain--2002:
 

Roy Haynes--"Snap Crackle":
 

Roy Haynes Trio--2009:

Roy Haynes Interview:  On Playing with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and John Coltrane:  

Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band--May 3, 2013:

Roy Haynes and Chick Corea's Freedom Band play "Monk's Dream" by Thelonious Monk--October 25, 2013):
 

Roy Haynes & The Fountain of Youth Quartet:

At Dizzy's Club Coca Cola in NYC in 2009

Roy was then 84 years old...

The Pace Report: "The Ever Youthful Drummer" The Roy Haynes Interview wsg Ron Carter:

Roy Haynes: Lifetime Achievement Award Acceptance

https://www.grammy.com/grammys/videos/roy-haynes-lifetime-achievement-award-acceptance

Click on the video clip above

Roy Haynes accepts The Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception in 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Haynes

Roy Haynes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roy Haynes
Haynes live at Carnegie Hall on September 18, 2007.
Background information
Birth name	Roy Owen Haynes
Born	March 13, 1925 (age 92) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Genres	Jazz, bebop, hard bop
Occupation(s)	Bandleader, percussionist, composer
Instruments	Drums, percussion
Years active	1945–present
Labels	Mainstream, Emarcy, Impulse!, Galaxy, New Jazz, Pacific Jazz, Evidence, Vogue
Associated acts	Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Wardell Gray

Roy Owen Haynes (born March 13, 1925)[1] is an American jazz drummer and group leader. Haynes is among the most recorded drummers in jazz, and in a career lasting more than 70 years has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He has a highly expressive, personal style ("Snap Crackle" was a nickname given him in the 1950s) and is known to foster a deep engagement in his bandmates.[citation needed]

He has also led his own groups, some performing under the name Hip Ensemble.[1] His most recent recordings as a leader are Fountain of Youth[2] and Whereas,[3] both of which have been nominated for a Grammy Award. He continues to perform worldwide and was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999.[4] His son Graham Haynes is a cornetist; his son Craig Haynes and grandson Marcus Gilmore are both drummers.

Contents

• 1 Early career
• 2 Later career
• 3 Technique
• 4 Endorsements
• 5 Awards and honors
• 6 Discography
• 6.1 As leader/co-leader
• 6.2 As sideman
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Early career

Born in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts, Haynes made his professional debut in 1944 at the age of seventeen in his native Boston.

Haynes began his full-time professional career in 1945. From 1947 to 1949 he worked with saxophonist Lester Young, and from 1949 to 1952 was a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's quintet. He also recorded at the time with pianist Bud Powell and saxophonists Wardell Gray and Stan Getz. From 1953 to 1958 he toured with singer Sarah Vaughan and also recorded with her.

Later career

Haynes's influence on the rock world has also been apparent, with a tribute song recorded by Jim Keltner and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones,[5] and recent on-stage appearances with the Allman Brothers Band[6] and Page McConnell of Phish.[7]

In 2008 Haynes appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as himself radio station JNR.

A 3 CD/1 DVD boxed set entitled A Life in Time - The Roy Haynes Story[8] was released by Dreyfus Jazz[9] in October 2007. The set chronicles highlights from Haynes career from 1949 to 2006, including recordings with Parker, Vaughan, Davis, Monk, Corea, Metheny and his own Hip Ensemble and Fountain of Youth quartet. The set was listed by The New Yorker Magazine as one of the Best Boxed Sets of 2007,[10] and was nominated for an award by the Jazz Journalist's Association.

WKCR-FM, New York,[11] surveyed Haynes's career in 301 hours of programming, January 11–23, 2009.[12]

On April 21, 2016, at the age of 91, Haynes performed drums on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, accompanied by Jon Batiste and Stay Human (band).

Technique

Haynes extracted the rhythmic qualities from melodies and created unique new drum and cymbal patterns in an idiosyncratic, now instantly recognizable style. Rather than using cymbals strictly for effect, Haynes brought them to the forefront of his unique rhythmic approach. He also established a distinctively crisp and rapid-fire sound on the snare; this was the inspiration for his nickname, ‘Snap Crackle’.

Endorsements

Haynes endorses Yamaha drums, pedals and hardware, Zildjian cymbals and Remo drumheads. He also uses his Zildjian Roy Haynes signature drumstick and has a Yamaha Roy Haynes signature snare drum. In the past, he endorsed Ludwig and Slingerland and he has been photographed playing Latin Percussion, notably congas.[13] Haynes had used Paiste flat rides in the past, thus indicating he may have endorsed Paiste at some stage.[14]

Awards and honors

Esquire named Roy Haynes one of the Best Dressed Men in America in 1960, along with Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and Cary Grant.

He was inducted into the Down Beat Magazine Hall of Fame in 2004. On October 9, 2010, Roy Haynes was awarded the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. On December 22, 2010, Haynes was named a recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.[15] Haynes received the award at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception of the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards on February 12, 2011.

Discography

Roy Haynes (left) and Gunther Schuller in 2008

As leader/co-leader

• 1954: Busman's Holiday
• 1954: Roy Haynes Modern Group
• 1956: Jazz Abroad (Mercury) split album with Quincy Jones
• 1958: We Three (New Jazz) with Paul Chambers & Phineas Newborn
• 1960: Just Us (New Jazz)
• 1962: Out of the Afternoon (Impulse!)
• 1963: Cracklin' (New Jazz) with Booker Ervin
• 1963: Cymbalism (New Jazz)
• 1964: People
• 1971: Hip Ensemble (Mainstream)
• 1972: Equipoise (Mainstream)
• 1973: Senyah (Mainstream)
• 1975: Togyu (RCA)
• 1976: Jazz a Confronto Vol. 29 (Horo)
• 1976: Sugar Roy
• 1977: Vistalite
• 1977: Thank You Thank You
• 1979: Live at the Riverbop (Marge)
• 1986: True or False (Freelance)
• 1992: Homecoming
• 1992: When It's Haynes It Roars
• 1994: My Shining Hour
• 1994: Te Vou! (with Pat Metheny)
• 1998: Praise
• 2000: The Roy Haynes Trio
• 2000: Roy Haynes
• 2001: Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker (with Roy Hargrove, Dave Holland and Kenny Garrett)
• 2003: Love Letters
• 2004: Fountain of Youth
• 2004: Quiet Fire (reissue of Thank You Thank You and Vistalite)
• 2006: Whereas
• 2007: A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story (3CD-1DVD Boxed Set, 1949–2006)
• 2011: Roy-Alty

As sideman

• 1949: Meet Milt Jackson (Milt Jackson)
• 1949: The Amazing Bud Powell (Bud Powell)
• 1950: Stan Getz Quartets, The Complete Roost Recordings (Stan Getz)
• 1951: Miles Davis and Horns (Miles Davis)
• 1955: In the Land of Hi-Fi (Sarah Vaughan)
• 1958: Thelonious in Action (Thelonious Monk)
• 1958: Misterioso (Thelonious Monk)
• 1958: Portrait of Art Farmer (Art Farmer)
• 1958: Brass & Trio (Sonny Rollins)
• 1958: In a Minor Groove (Dorothy Ashby)
• 1958: In the Vernacular (John Handy)
• 1958: Latin Affair (George Shearing)
• 1959: Live at the Five Spot (Randy Weston)
• 1959: A Night at the Vanguard (Kenny Burrell)
• 1959: Piano Portraits by Phineas Newborn (Phineas Newborn, Jr.)
• 1959: The Sonny Side of Stitt (Sonny Stitt)
• 1959: I Love a Piano (Phineas Newborn, Jr.)
• 1959: You and Lee (Lee Konitz)
• 1960: Outward Bound (Eric Dolphy)
• 1960: Far Cry (Eric Dolphy)
• 1960: Soul Street (Jimmy Forrest)
• 1960: Soul Battle (Oliver Nelson, King Curtis & Jimmy Forrest)
• 1960: Something Nice (Etta Jones)
• 1960: Singin' & Swingin' (Betty Roché)
• 1960: The Tommy Flanagan Trio (Tommy Flanagan)
• 1960: Stittsville, Sonny Side Up (Sonny Stitt)
• 1960: The Great Kai & J. J. (Kai Winding & J. J. Johnson)
• 1960: Taking Care of Business (Oliver Nelson)
• 1960: Trane Whistle (Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis)
• 1961: Here's Jaki, Out Front! (Jaki Byard)
• 1961: Plenty of Horn (Ted Curson)
• 1961: Focus (Stan Getz)
• 1961: The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy (Steve Lacy)
• 1961: The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Oliver Nelson)
• 1962: The Song Is Paris (Jackie Paris)
• 1962: Stitt in Orbit (Sonny Stitt)
• 1962: Domino (Roland Kirk)
• 1962: Reaching Fourth (McCoy Tyner)
• 1962: Ted Curson Plays Fire Down Below (Ted Curson)
• 1962: Bossa Nova Plus (Willis Jackson)
• 1963: Black Fire (Andrew Hill)
• 1963: Yo Ho! Poor You, Little Me (Frank Wess)
• 1963: Smokestack (Andrew Hill)
• 1963: Newport '63 (John Coltrane)
• 1963: Destination... Out! (Jackie McLean)
• 1964: It's Time! (Jackie McLean)
• 1964: Blue Spoon (Jimmy Witherspoon)
• 1966: Tennessee Firebird (Gary Burton)
• 1966: The Stan Getz Quartet in Paris (Stan Getz)
• 1967: Duster (Gary Burton)
• 1968: What the World Needs Now: Stan Getz Plays Burt Bacharach and Hal David (Stan Getz)
• 1968: The Way Ahead (Archie Shepp)
• 1968: Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (Chick Corea)
• 1968: The DeJohnette Complex (Jack DeJohnette)
• 1969: In the World (Clifford Jordan)
• 1969: Black, Brown and Beautiful (Oliver Nelson)
• 1969: Country Roads & Other Places (Gary Burton)
• 1971: Under Fire (Gato Barbieri)
• 1974: All The Things We Are (Dave Brubeck)
• 1975: Misty Thursday (Duke Jordan)
• 1976: Trinity (Tommy Flanagan)
• 1976: Live in Japan (Duke Jordan)
• 1976: Flight to Japan (Duke Jordan)
• 1976: How Deep, How High (Warne Marsh)
• 1977: Baritone Madness (Nick Brignola Sextet with Pepper Adams)
• 1978: Manhattan Project (Dizzy Reece)
• 1978: Birds and Ballads (Johnny Griffin)
• 1978: Blowin' Away (Dizzy Reece and Ted Curson)
• 1978: Times Square (Gary Burton)
• 1978: Transfiguration (Alice Coltrane)
• 1978: Ain't Misbehavin' (Hank Jones)
• 1978: Equipoise (Stanley Cowell)
• 1978: Lady Bird (Archie Shepp)
• 1979: The Trio (Ted Curson)
• 1983: Trio Music (Chick Corea)
• 1984: Trio Music Live in Europe (Chick Corea)
• 1987: Live in Montreaux (Chick Corea)
• 1987: Blues for Coltrane (McCoy Tyner)
• 1989: Question and Answer (Pat Metheny)
• 1994: Wanton Spirit (trio led by Kenny Barron with Charlie Haden)
• 1996: Flamingo (Michel Petrucciani & Stephane Grappelli)
• 1998: Like Minds (Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Pat Metheny)
• 2011: Sonny Rollins–Road Shows vol. 2 (Sonny Rollins)

References

1. 
   
2. 
   

Biography

Fountain of Youth Archived November 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.

[1] Archived November 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.

"Modern Drummer’s Readers Poll Archive, 1979–2014". Modern Drummer. Retrieved 10 August 2015.

"Charlie Watts". Rosebudus.com. Retrieved 2011-10-18.

[2]

Dreyfus Records

A Life in Time - The Roy Haynes Story

Dreyfus Jazz Archived January 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.

Best Boxed Sets of 2007 The New Yorker

"WKCR 89.9FM NY". Wkcr.org. Retrieved 2011-10-18.

"Timeoutnj.com". .timeoutny.com. Retrieved 2011-10-18.

Jon McCaslin, "Enjoy Your Weekend....With Roy Haynes!" Four on the Floor, June 12, 2010.

"Jazz Backstage: Roy Haynes & Chick Corea", Jazz Online, May 24, 2011.

1. "The Recording Academy Announces Special Merit Award Honorees". Grammy.com News. Retrieved December 22, 2010.

External links

• Roy Haynes — Featured Musician (Drummer Cafe)
• Drummerworld article
• Interview
• Concert Review
• Interview for the NAMM Oral History Program (2008)
• Video Interview with Jon Batiste (2017)