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I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
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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...
A veteran drummer long
overshadowed by others, but finally gaining recognition for his talents
and versatility, Roy Haynes has been a major player since the 1940s. 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.
Roy Haynes was born in Boston, March 13, 1925, and was keenly
interested in jazz ever since he can remember. Primarily self-taught, he
began to work locally in 1942 with musicians like the Charlie Christian
inflected guitarist Tom Brown, bandleader Sabby Lewis, and Kansas City
blues-shout alto saxophonist Pete Brown, before getting a call in the
summer of 1945 to join legendary bandleader Luis Russell (responsible
for much of Louis Armstrong's musical backing from 1929 to 1933) to play
for the dancers at New York's legendary Savoy Ballroom. When not
traveling with Russell, the young drummer spent much time on Manhattan's
52nd Street and uptown in Minton's, the legendary incubator of bebop,
soaking up the scene.
Haynes was Lester Young's drummer from 1947
to 1949, worked with Bud Powell and Miles Davis in '49, became Charlie
Parker's drummer of choice from 1949 to 1953, toured the world with
Sarah Vaughan from 1954 to 1959, did numerous extended gigs with
Thelonious Monk in 1959-60, made eight recordings with Eric Dolphy in
1960-61, worked extensively with Stan Getz from 1961 to 1965, played and
recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet from 1963 to 1965, has
collaborated with Chick Corea since 1968, and with Pat Metheny during
the '90s. Metheny was featured on Haynes' previous Dreyfus release Te
Vou! (voted by NAIRD as Best Contemporary Jazz Record of 1996). He's
been an active bandleader from the late '50s to the present, featuring
artists in performance and on recordings like Phineas Newborn, Booker
Ervin, Roland Kirk, George Adams, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Ralph Moore
and Donald Harrison. A perpetual top three drummer in the Downbeat
Readers Poll Awards, he won the Best Drummer honors in 1996 (and many
years since), and in that year received the prestigious French Chevalier
des l'Ordres Artes et des Lettres.
"I structure pieces like
riding a horse," he says. "You pull a rein here, you tighten it up here,
you loosen it there. I'm still sitting in the driver's seat, so to
speak. I let it loose, I let it go, I see where it's going and what it
feels like. Sometimes I take it out, sometimes I'll be polite, nice and
let it move and breathe — always in the pocket and with feeling. So the
music is tight but loose."
“I am constantly practicing in my head.
In fact, a teacher in school once sent me to the principal, because I
was drumming with my hands on the desk in class. My father used to say I
was just nervous. I'm always thinking rhythms, drums. When I was very
young I used to practice a lot; not any special thing, but just practice
playing. Now I'm like a doctor. When he's operating on you, he's
practicing. When I go to my gigs, that's my practice. I may play
something that I never heard before or maybe that you never heard
before. It's all a challenge. I deal with sounds. I'm full of rhythm,
man. I feel it. I think summer, winter, fall, spring, hot, cold, fast
and slow — colors. But I don't analyze it. I've been playing
professionally over 50 years, and that's the way I do it. I always
surprise myself. The worst surprise is when I can't get it to happen.
But it usually comes out. I don't play for a long period, and then I'm
like an animal, a lion or tiger locked in its cage, and when I get out I
try to restrain myself. I don't want to overplay. I like the guys to
trade, and I just keep it moving, and spread the rhythm, as Coltrane
said. Keep it moving, keep it crisp."
Dreyfus Jazz proudly released Roy Haynes’ “Birds of a
Feather,” a tribute to the immortal Charlie "Bird" Parker, in September
2001. The father of the bebop movement, Bird turned the jazz world
upside down in the early 1940s with his immense technical facility and
grand breaking improvisational ideas. For Haynes’ fourth recording for
the label, the eminent drummer and bandleader takes us back to the era
during which he made his first major impact playing alongside Bird,
Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and the other legendary bop progenitors. The
album was nominated for a Grammy in 2002.
Dreyfus Jazz has just
released Roy's latest masterpiece, "Fountain of Youth," a fiery live
record featuring his youthful working band. Inspired by each other's
deft musicianship, the album is a testament to awe inspring career of
the eternally youthful Roy Haynes.
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.
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 performs on the Late Show with David Letterman, featuring:
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.
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Stanley Crouch is the author of The Artificial White Man and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz
Roy Owen Haynes (born March 13, 1925) is an American jazz drummer.[1] He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career lasting over 80 years, he has played swing, bebop, jazz fusion, avant-garde jazz and is considered a pioneer of jazz drumming. "Snap Crackle" was a nickname given to him in the 1950s.[2]
Haynes has led bands such as the Hip Ensemble.[1] His albums Fountain of Youth[3] and Whereas[4] were nominated for a Grammy Award.[5][6] He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999.[7] His son Graham Haynes is a cornetist; another son Craig Holiday Haynes and grandson Marcus Gilmore are both drummers.[8]
Haynes made his professional debut in 1942 in his native Boston, and began his full-time professional career in 1945.[11] From 1947 to 1949 he worked with saxophonist Lester Young,[9] and from 1949 to 1952 was a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's quintet.[9] He also recorded at the time with pianist Bud Powell and saxophonists Wardell Gray and Stan Getz.[9] From 1953 to 1958, he toured with singer Sarah Vaughan and recorded with her.[12][13]
In 2008, Haynes lent his voice to the open-world video game Grand Theft Auto IV, to voice himself as the DJ for the fictional classic jazz radio station, Jazz Nation Radio 108.5.[18]
Haynes is known to celebrate his birthday on stage, in recent years at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City.[19] In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, his 95th birthday celebration was cancelled.[20]
Awards and honors
A Life in Time –The Roy Haynes Story was named by The New Yorker magazine as one of the Best Boxed Sets of 2007[21] and was nominated for an award by the Jazz Journalist's Association.[22]
WKCR-FM, New York,[23] surveyed Haynes's career in 301 hours of programming, January 11–23, 2009.[24]
In 1994, Haynes was awarded the Danish Jazzpar prize, and in 1996 the French government knighted him with the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top literary and artistic honor.[5] In 1995, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts named Haynes as a NEA Jazz_Master.[25] Haynes received honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music (1991),[26] and the New England Conservatory (2004),[27] as well as a Peabody Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, in 2012.[28] He was inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame in 2004.[29] On October 9, 2010, he 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.[30]
Roy Haynes: Snap Crackle by Ashley Kahn November 1, 2005
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
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
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 52nd 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; 52nd 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
“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.
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.
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:
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.
Jesus on the Mainline (Traditional -Patitucci Solo)
Inner Trust (Kikoski)
Summer Night (Al Dubin-Harry Warren)
Sneakin' Around (Ray Bryant)
Roy Haynes Interview: On Playing with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and John Coltrane:
March 23, 2010
Roy Haynes celebrated his 85th Birthday at the Blue Note in New York City, where his guest, Chick Corea, quizzed him about his time (in the late '40s) with Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, and later, John Coltrane. Chick recorded the classic "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs" with Roy in 1968.
Roy Haynes Quartet - Live at Blue Note Jazz Club, Jazz Festival NYC
(June 12, 2019)
Roy Haines is a living legend of jazz. Born March 13, 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Haynes is the only musician in jazz history to play and record with such legendary figures as
Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Chick Corea, and Pat Metheny and this is not a complete list of the star performers with whom Roy Haines worked. And now, in his 95 years, Roy is full of energy!
Jaleel Shaw - alto and soprano saxophone,
Martin Bejerano - keyboards,
David Wong - bass and
Roy Haynes - drums
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.