Roy Haynes: 1925-2024

Roy Haynes, whose power and sensitivity on the drums made him a first choice for leading jazz instrumentalists and singers and whose tasteful pokes, polyrhythms and grooves landed him on swing, bebop, cool, Third Stream, spiritual, free jazz and fusion recording sessions, died on November 12. He was 99.

Born eight years after the first jazz 78 was recorded in 1917, Roy began his recording career in Luis Russell's band in New York in 1945. His first bebop recordings were made in 1947 with Babs Gonzales, and he was soon recording behind Sarah Vaughan, Lester Young, Milt Jackson, Brew Moore, Al Haig, Bud Powell, Kai Winding, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker. And that was just in the 1940s.

Roy was on more than 400 recording sessions. Stylistically, he was more rhythmically busy than most drummers but less so than Max Roach and less bombastic than Art Blakey, Roy played with sly sophistication and unpredictable drama, providing instrumentalists and singers with solid time but also hip interactions. So much so that Sarah Vaughan liked to play around with his name when introducing him during performances. She'd say “Roy" and leave space for Roy to add a bass drum fill before saying “Haynes."

You can hear this playful, mutual salute on Shulie a Bop, in 1954, from Swingin' Easy by moving the time bar to 1:29...



In tribute to Roy, here's my complete 2008 JazzWax interview along with a brief conversation we had in 2010 about Red Garland's four tracks recorded with him and Charlie Parker:

JazzWax: Is it tough being Roy Haynes?

Roy Haynes: [laughing] By the time I wake up every day, there’s so much I have to do and get done. Recently it has been crazy. Houses, automobiles, my god, there’s never a dull moment. And still be a drummer. I didn’t even realize I was going to be living this long and playing and having great-grandchildren.

JW: How do you stay so young? Is it a diet and workout thing?

RH: No, no, there’s no secret. I work out mentally. I always watch what I eat. And I have a 10-speed bike that I haven’t had time to ride as much as I’d like. I don't eat pork. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it.

JW: Are fellow musicians shocked?

RH: [laughs] I recently played with bassist Stanley Clarke in Manhattan. We hadn’t seen each other in some time. He was holding a private sound-check on the afternoon before our performance. Nobody else was supposed to come in. But I had to go check the drums they had for me. I had to bogart my way in. Stanley saw me there from afar and later told me I blew his mind. He said I looked like I was 30. He said I had on this tank top on and these muscles. [laughing]

JW: What was it like growing up in Boston in the 1930s?

RH: It was beautiful. The house we lived in, my father bought it when I was about 2 years old. Boston in 1940 was heavily Irish at the time. We had an Irish family on one side of our home, French-Canadians on the other and a synagogue in front of our house. It was great growing up with all different kinds of kids. My brother, who’s 81, always talks about how much fun it was growing up there. My parents were wonderful people. They were from Barbados.

JW: How did you come to the drums?

RH: The drums were always with me, ever since I can remember, man. I always wanted to be a drummer. My brother had drumsticks around the house, and those were the first sticks I picked up. The feeling and beat were always there, as long as I can remember.

JW: Did your parents encourage you?

RH: My father would come see me wherever I played. He even traveled to New York. My mother never came. She was a very religious woman. But one time when I was playing at a small club in the Roxbury section of Boston, I saw her standing at the door smiling and laughing while I played. That felt beautiful.

JW: What did your dad do for a living?

RH: He worked for Standard Oil. When the depression came, that screwed him up financially. Fortunately we had that house he bought, so we had a place to live.

JW: One of your first big gigs was in 1945 with Luis Russell, a legendary New Orleans pianist and bandleader.

RH: That’s right. Luis Russell had played with King Oliver. He was a great pianist and musician. He used to front Louis Armstrong’s band, and Louis used Russell’s band back in the 1930s. But by 1945, Russell was fronting a swing band. He had heard about me from saxophonist Charlie Holmes. Charlie was in a band I had played with in New London, Conn., during the war. Back then, there was a naval base there, and anytime soldiers and sailors are together, there's always music, women and dancing. When Luis heard about me from Charlie, he sent a special delivery letter to Boston Local 535. There were two musicians union locals in Boston then—Local 9 and Local 535. I don’t have to tell you which was which. I was pretty popular during that period so the Local knew that I was playing drums for the summer on Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. Luis Russell believed in me even before he heard me, and that gave me enormous confidence.

JW: Some of your earliest dates with Russell were at the Savoy Ballroom in New York. What was that place like in the mid-1940s?

RH: Oh man, that was my first gig in New York. The energy level was great there. People were always dancing. They called the Savoy the “Home of Happy Feet.” The building had two floors. The ballroom was on the second floor, and you could feel that surface bounce. There were a lot of happy girls there. They had one night a week where ladies got in free, I think on Thursdays. And there were always two bands there on two bandstands, side by side.

JW: What made Luis Russell's band so special for you?

RH: Well, we played the Savoy, which of course was exciting. But even more incredible for me was that I was playing behind an 18-piece big band. You learn a lot keeping time for a big band people that are dancing to, especially one that had to be on top of its game at the Savoy. I found out after I got back to Boston that I had changed the sound of that band after playing with them for more than a year. Luis didn’t tell me. Musicians had told my brother.

JW: In late 1947, you started a long run with Lester Young.

RH: Yes, I was with him for two years. He was a very humorous guy. He had his own way of talking. It was like a foreign language unless you understood it. Otherwise, what he said wouldn't have made much sense to you. You had to pick up on his special way of putting things to know what he meant. Sometimes you wouldn’t even know what the hell he was talking about. Thelonious Monk sort of reminded me of Lester. They both had their own way of talking.

JW: And both radically changed jazz at the time.

RH: Back then, there were people playing jazz who were so original, even more so than everyone else who played it, you know. They developed different ways of communicating in the different parts of the ghettos we lived in and hung out in. There were a lot of exceptional people and musicians in the neighborhoods who never got credit. You've never heard of them and they're all but forgotten. Lester Young was one of those special people you did hear about. But you had to have a little imagination about a lot of things to get where he was coming from.

JW: For example?

RH: I told this story to Miles back in the 1940s, and he got a kick out of it. During the period when I first came to New York, the standard size of a bass drum was 26 inches. So when I joined Lester Young in 1947, I still had that size bass drum. But it was stolen the day before or on the same day we were supposed to go to California by way of Chicago. So when I got to Chicago, Max Roach was there. He told me there was a guy in town from Ludwig drums. Max said he'd introduce me to him. So I met the guy, and went to the factory, which was on the north side of Chicago. Joe Harris, a drummer from Pittsburgh, went with me. The drum I got that day was one of the first smaller, 20-inch bass drums.

JW: Was there something wrong with it?

RH: No, not at all. It was just smaller and had a slightly tighter sound. When I got the bass drum back to the Hotel Pershing where I was staying in Chicago, Lester took a look at it and without missing a beat nicknamed it “Princess Wee-Wee." Everything Lester Young named had a female connection, like Lady Day for Billie Holiday. He had that kind of fast mind. “Princess" was a name of affection for him. “Wee-Wee" was small, you know? It was quick. The man had a special kind of genius but you had to understand his way of thinking to get him and appreciate his way of thinking. Miles [Davis] and Max [Roach] came by the hotel before we left. They were in town the same day with Charlie Parker, who had just gotten fired for something at some club. When I told them the name Prez had come up with for the drum, they laughed because the name was so perfect.

JW: As a jazz drummer, you've always been one of the most careful listeners. What are you listening for?

RH: How do you know I’m a listener?

JW: When I listen to you play, I can hear you listening intensively behind Prez, Bird, Monk, Sonny. And I can hear you responding, sometimes feeding musicians the lines they pick up on. I also can hear you anticipating the figures they're going to play.

RH: What instrument do you play?

JW: A little piano. Mostly I do a lot of listening to recordings.

RH: You must, because that’s a hell of a statement, unless you read that someplace.

JW: No, no. It's just that I can hear your sensitivity and the conversation you're striking up on the spot with the musicians you're recording with.

RH: That’s very true. I do a lot of listening. I recently heard a Mary Lou Williams recording on the radio from 1970 with me on drums. It was a live recording. As I listened to it recently, I could feel myself listening to what she was doing, trying to catch up with her on drums, listening to see what direction she was going in. It was the first time I had ever heard what you're talking about. Joe Fields produced it. He was supposed to send me some more money. You can put that in there. [laughing]

JW: On a Roy Haynes recording, there's the beat you're keeping and then there's that extra dimension of how you're listening and responding. True?

RH: Yes, and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that expressed as such.

JW: From a drummer's standpoint, which bassist kept the best time in the 1940s? Tommy Potter? Roy Haynes: It's not for me to say who was the best in the 40s. I don't know. I'll tell you one thing, Paul Chambers was the best for me, in the 40s, 50s or whenever. I loved that guy. I loved that feeling he created. With Paul, the feeling was always there. I loved his warmth and how he could let certain notes ring short or long. He had so much warmth and imagination.

JW: But there were so many great bassists back in the 40's—Potter, Curly Russell, Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown.

RH: Yeah, yeah, they were all good, too. But after I played with Paul in the mid-1950s, it was a whole different feeling. There was so much warmth there. Bass playing is all about how you let your notes ring and how you cut certain notes short. The bass developed into a completely new feeling with Paul. Back in the 1940s Tommy Potter was great, and Curly Russell was known to be a nice guy and a business guy who was always on time. He was very popular in those days. But the feeling with Paul Chambers, wow. I don't like to start naming a lot of different names or to say who has this or has that. A lot of people like to do that but it's not really my thing.

JW: The bassist is pretty important to the drummer, yes? He keeps time, and you play off of that?

RH: Definitely, definitely. He's critical to what I'm doing. I like to be around bass players who can feel what you're doing and play off of it. I'm a different type of drummer as well for the bassist and for everyone else. I'm constantly moving and shifting.

JW: Did you like playing with Charlie Parker?

RH: The first time I heard him on a record I knew he was different. The record was Hootie Blues, with Jay McShann, and Walter Brown singing. You knew right away that Bird was unusual, that his approach was completely different than anything else you had heard. And that sound, it was so confident. 

JW: You played on many of the live performances of Bird with strings. Did you dig that format?

RH: I love melodies, and a lot of the tunes Charlie Parker played with strings were melodic. The strings format sometimes could be a little stiff. But he was trying to reach that audience, I think, and it seemed to work.

JW: But did you like playing with the strings?

RH: It was cool, you know [laughing]. I don't think that I'd want to do that all night, every night. And we didn't. In fact, there were times when he'd stretch out on the strings stuff with the rhythm section and hang loose rather than play the arrangements as written.

JW: What was the big difference between you and Max Roach behind Bird?

RH: I had and have a different type of cymbal beat, for one thing. Max's cymbal beat was more on the one: dah-dah dom, dah-dah dom, dah-dah dom. Mine is more dom dah-dah, dom dah-dah, dom dah-dah. That's as far as I'll go with that. [laughs] That's one of the things I'm sure Bird liked about me. Lester Young as well. I had a distinct cymbal beat. Beyond that, Max was one of the greatest drummers ever.

JW: Was Miles Davis naturally cool or did he have to work at it?

RH: [laughing] He was naturally cool. We were both into fast automobiles and sharp clothes. We both were mentioned in a 1960 Esquire article on style and fashion. We were both in our 30s back then, so we had a lot in common that way. In fact, 10 years earlier, in the summer of 1950, we both bought convertible automobiles the exact same week. It wasn't planned.

JW: What make?

RH: I had a 1950 Oldsmobile 98. Miles had a Dodge convertible, but it was a fast Dodge. I think he called it the Blue Devil. Mine was light gray.

JW: What was Miles like to be around?

RH: Miles would always come by my gigs someplace with women and say to them [imitating Miles' raspy voice]: “Yeah, me and Roy, we used to smash up our cars. We were the sharpest mothers on 52d St." His exact words. There was a lot in common there. It was an exciting period, man. In fact, I met my wife when I was working with Miles in Brooklyn. It was Miles' gig, and she had come to see him. The ladies loved Miles. I had some fans, too, but I wasn't nearly as popular as Miles. He had just left Charlie Parker then and I had just left Lester Young. We were the coolest of the cool.

JW: Listening to Bud Powell, it sounds like he was always trying to throw off the drummer. True?

RH: Not really. Bud could outfox anyone, another player. But not me or any drummer he played with. The drummer was going to make him sound good. It was beautiful playing behind him. Cause he had so much rhythm. All you had to do is accompany him.

JW: Did Charlie Parker like doing that Cole Porter date in 1954? He seemed to resist it. You played with him on most of the album's tracks in March of that year.

RH: It's hard to say whether he dug it or not. It could have been Norman Granz's idea.

JW: How did Sarah Vaughan come up with her signature introduction of you—saying your first name while you added a fill before she said your last name?

RH: She started introducing us on this tune she'd scat, which ended up being Shulie-A-Bop. We'd do that every night in the clubs. It just developed into that scene like it did. I can go all over the world, and someone will come up to me and say, “Roy... dat-dat-dat... Haynes." A lot of people remember that. It lived on.

JW: Did you have to listen hard to Sarah to figure out where she was going on a song?

RH: Usually I knew where she was going. But if she was scatting, naturally, that's ad-libbing, and I'd have to figure it out. But when you're with somebody for that length of time—five years—it all becomes second nature. I'm into lyrics. I love lyrics. Sarah Vaughan was the Charlie Parker of the vocalists during the 1950s. It was great. With Sarah, that was the first time I had gone to Europe, Africa, the West Indies and a lot of places in this country.

JW: Was she tough to work for?

RH: No, she was beautiful to work for. Most artists have a pretty good sense of humor, at least those who play this type of music.

JW: Your playing on Cutie, on Sonny Rollins's The Sound of Sonny, is a pure example of you listening and carrying on a conversation with a date's leader and soloist.

RH: Wow, I don't remember that one.

JW: Here, listen [playing the track].

RH: Oh, yeah. OK, Cutie. Is that what it's called? I wish Sonny had played that at Carnegie Hall last fall. I heard he didn't want to release the album.

JW: He apparently didn't like how it sounded

RH: That's fine. Look, he hears what he hears. It's a feeling, you know. I would hope that he'd release it someday.

JW: Your brush work on Cutie is a trip.

RH: I don't play brushes often anymore. I did use them on one of my gigs recently with my quartet. There was a drummer there who later wanted me to show him some things. You know, brushes are not too popular now. Everything is about power. I think I'm going to start playing more brushes because a lot of other drummers don't play them.

JW: Monk's greatest live recordings, in my opinion, were made with you at New York's Five Spot in 1958. You were having some “conversation" with him on those recordings.

RH: We were there for about 18 weeks, three sets a night once Monk would show up. Sometimes he wouldn't turn up until there was no telling what time. That was a very exciting period. That was one of my first gigs after leaving Sarah. I had young children then, so it was nice to play the gig, hang out a little bit and then go home.

JW: Did you and Monk work out in advance what you'd play?

RH: Monk didn't talk that much. He would hire you for what you do. At least in my case that was the situation. We were in the Five Spot more than once, you know. He didn't call me for the dates. He had Nica [de Koenigswarter], the Baroness, call me. He was close with her.

JW: Was Monk hard to play with?

RH: There was a lot that was tricky about playing with him. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. Like you mentioned before, you really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You know. It was a lot. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well.

JW: Tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin also was with you. Did his playing get in the way while you were trying to listen to Monk?

RH: Not really. Sometimes John would play just the melody of a Monk song. Then when he'd play his solo, it was different. At that point, he's leading his own thing and you're behind him at that point, listening to what he's doing and playing off him.

JW: Billie Holiday's last club recording was April 1959 at George Wein's Storyville club in Boston. You were on drums. Do you remember the gig? Was Billie ill?

RH: Of course. [singing in a deep voice, from Gigi] “I remember it well." I didn't see Billie in bad shape. I thought she was cool. We were playing there for a week. She was cool. I remember the club was crowded every night. A lot of my friends came in. My wife was there for the whole weekend. She wanted to tape it, but I said, “No, Billie isn't going to allow that." Looking back, Billie probably wouldn't have been aware of it. All in all, it was a beautiful week.

JW: Was it different playing behind Billie compared to Sarah?

RH: Billie was from an older school than Sarah but I loved that. I just played some nice soft brushes behind her. I do remember that when she'd get off the set, she'd go and cry. It was sad. She told me she had cirrhosis of the liver, the same thing Lester Young had died from. But her voice sounded good that week. You'd never have known that just three months later she'd be gone.

Charlie Parker and pianist Red Garland played together several times at clubs between 1947 and 1949 in Philadelphia and again in Boston in the early 1950s. But despite their gigs, only four known tracks exist of Parker and Garland playing on the same date. These tracks are from a Boston radio broadcast in March 1953. The recordings represent the merging of two Midwestern players, both of whom were influenced by the same saxophonist and were deeply rooted in the blues. Yesterday I spoke briefly with Roy Haynes, the drummer on the Storyville date.

The year 1953 was an important one for Garland. In addition to his Boston broadcast with Parker, Miles Davis had approached him to join a group he was forming. The musicians Davis lined up were Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Max Roach on drums. Garland happily agreed, but the group never came to be. Davis was struggling to kick a drug habit, and by the time he resumed recording for Blue Note in 1954, Horace Silver was on piano.

So for the next year or so, Garland continued playing behind Lester Young and many other headliners who passed through Boston. In March 1955, Miles Davis returned and asked Garland to be part of a recording session for Prestige with Oscar Pettiford and Philly Joe Jones. Davis wanted Garland to play light and airy, like Ahmad Jamal, and the result was The Musings of Miles. By October of '53, Davis formed a new group, the famed quintet, with Garland, John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers.

But two years before Musings of Miles and the emergence of his Jamalian piano approach, Garland was trying to find himself stylistically in Boston, as captured on the recordings with Charlie Parker.

Four songs were performed live and somehow recorded—Moose the Mooch, I'll Walk Alone, Ornithology and Out of Nowhere. Parker is relaxed and peppery on these tracks, while Garland exhibits terrific time and a bluesy touch. But this isn't yet the Garland who would flower under Davis' direction two years later. Nevertheless, the result is fascinating, and what we hear in Boston is the beginning of Garland's earthy, polished sound.

Roy Haynes: Red and I made up the house rhythm section at Storyville. He was going with a girl up in Boston so Red liked to work there steadily. Red and Bird sounded great together. When you've got a genius up front like Bird, he's listening to everything and absorbing it. Red was doing the same. You could hear them listening to each other. They were a nice fit. Hey, what do you expect? They had a great drummer [laughs]. By the way, the bassist, Bernie Griggs, was something. If he had lived longer, he would have been great.

JazzWax clip: Here's Parker and Garland together live in March 1953 at Storyville on I'll Walk Alone. Dig Garland's block-chords passage toward the end of his solo and Roy Haynes' jack-in-the-box bass-drum accents throughout...