Roy Haynes, drummer for Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, dies

Born in 1925 in Roxbury (Massachusetts), Haynes came into the world to play the drums: in school, he was once sent to the principal’s office for banging his hands on his desk in class. His parents, Gustavus and Edna Haynes, had emigrated to the US from Barbados and it was his older brother, trumpeter Douglas Haynes, who introduced him to the world of jazz.

Roy studied violin for a year but always knew that percussion was his thing, so he became a voracious apprentice with Professor Herbie Wright and attended the Boston Conservatory, although he was mostly self-taught, focusing on the style of his greatest idol, Jo Jones, Count Basie’s drummer. As soon as he had the opportunity, he left his studies at the Roxbury Memorial to start playing with Sabby Lewis, Frankie Newton and Felix Barbozza, and in 1945 he moved to New York to join the bands of Louis Russell, Louis Armstrong and Lester Young.

In the fifties he played with George Shearing, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Wardell Gray, Miles Davis and Lennie Tristano, and in the early sixties he occasionally replaced Elvin Jones in the Coltrane quartet. Over the rest of the decade he would record dozens of albums with McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Gary Burton, Clifford Jordan, or Chick Corea. The seventies were for Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Reece, Duke Jordan or John Coltrane’s daughter, Alice; and in the eighties he expanded his list of collaborations with the names of Freddie Hubbard, Michel Petrucciani, Kenny Barron, Mark Isaacs and the guitarist Pat Metheny, who defined him like this: «Roy is the human manifestation of what the word was supposed to mean. “hip” before it became a word. Always in the moment, always in tempo, timeless and classic and at the same time totally indifferent about it. “He has a way of being inside the musical moment with a depth that is truly rare, and an auditory sensitivity that allows him not only to play beautifully, but also to make the musicians around him become beneficiaries of his musical wisdom.”

While developing an almost unrivaled resume as a collaborator, Haynes recorded around forty albums as a leader or co-leader, including ‘Just us’ (1960), ‘Out of the afternoon’ (1962), ‘Cymbalism’ (1963) , ‘Hip Ensemble’ (1971), ‘Vistalite’ (1979), ‘True or False’ (1986), ‘Te Vou!’ (1994) or ‘Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker’ (2001). His latest recordings, ‘Roy-Alty’ as leader and ‘Road Shows vol. 2’ with Sony Rollins, were published in 2011, the year he received the Grammy for artistic career. He was nominated nine times for these awards, and participated in two groups that won the award for Best Jazz Group, in 1989 for ‘Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane’ (McCoy Tyner) and in 200 for ‘Like Minds’ (Gary Burton). He was also named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1995.

Haynes, who since the 1950s was known by the nickname ‘Snap Crackle’ for his hitting, said in 1998 of his drumming style: “Every time I read something about myself it usually says ‘bebop.’ And I’m not always comfortable with those labels that people use. “I’m just an old school drummer trying to play with feeling.”

In his later years as a musician, Haynes frequently led a changing group of musicians in a band known as the Fountain of Youth, an appropriate name given that the musicians he chose to work with were often three or four decades older. youths. “When we got on stage,” he told Albany’s Times Union in 2007, “we all became the same age, the same age. “It has nothing to do with how old you are or where you are from, it is what you can do musically.” Haynes is survived by his sons Craig and Graham, the latter a cornetist recognized for his contributions to nu-jazz, and his grandson, drummer Marcus Gilmore.