| Subject: Jazz drummer Roy Haynes (who played with Armstrong, Coltrane, Getz and others) dies at 99 .... |
Author:
Ed Tracey
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Date Posted: 11/15/24 1:15:59pm
Roy Haynes, pioneering modern jazz drummer, has died at 99
By Ben Ratliff, Eric Westervelt of National Public Radio
Published November 12, 2024 at 3:39 PM EST
https://www.wbgo.org/music/2024-11-12/roy-haynes-pioneering-modern-jazz-drummer-has-died-at-99
Roy Haynes, the pioneering jazz drummer who performed with legends like Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Sarah Vaughan, died Tuesday at the age of 99.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Leslie Haynes-Gilmore, to WRTI's Nate Chinen.
To listen to any part of Roy Haynes' drumming individually is to confront something important about jazz and what it can contain. The light and shifting ride-cymbal patterns, the uneven bass-drum accents, the crisply organized breaks or context-smashing disruptions on snare, the clarifying semaphore of the high-hat: Each of these is worth following on its own.
But who does that? Better to hear all the parts functioning together as a complex, swinging organism. And Haynes played in such a way that all his startling musical details conjoined with human qualities: grace, humor, excitement, cool, confidence, vitality. He got up toward the front of the stage and tap-danced during his gigs, sometimes as an integral part of a drum solo. If you weren't conditioned to pay close attention to the drummer in a group, he could be the one to make you start. No matter the group, he wasn't just part of the rhythm section. He was — as per Sarah Vaughan's introduction on her 1954 track "Shulie a Bop," in alternation with his snare-drum hits — [crack!] Roy. [rat-tat-tat!] Haynes.
Born March 13, 1925, Haynes grew up within a remarkable family in the culturally integrated Boston neighborhood of Roxbury; he described his block as a mixture of French Canadian, Jewish, Irish and Black families from the South. His parents, Gustavus and Edna Haynes, both came from Barbados, and his father worked for the Standard Oil company. (Both sang, and Gustavus played the organ in church.)
Apart from his musicianship, surely part of Haynes' success can be attributed to the fact that he led a disciplined and drug-free life. And some might have been because he cut a magnetic and imposing figure, in sharp clothes and sharp automobiles. (A 1960 article by George Frazier in Esquire magazine listed him as one of the best-dressed men of that year, alongside Dean Acheson, Clark Gable and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; it noted his preference for custom-made suits from The Andover Shop, in Cambridge, Mass. Later, his interests would run to satin jackets, gaucho pants with side-buttons, and cowboy hats.)
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