Roy Haynes, known for his avant-garde style of jazz and a pioneer of jazz drumming, passed away on Tuesday, November 12 at the age of 99. The news was announced by Haynes’ daughter Leslie Haynes-Gilmore in a statement to WRTI-FM in Philadelphia.
Born Roy Owen Haynes on March 13, 1925 to parents from Barbados, Haynes grew up in the Roxbury section of Boston, known for its cultural diversity. He came from a musical family, his parents were actively involved in the church with his mother singing and his father playing the organ. His brother was in a high school drum corp, which sparked Haynes interest in drumming. “…I picked up his sticks around the house, and boom – I started banging on everything,” he recalled in an interview with NPR back in 1997, “So later on, I started getting pieces of the trap set – like the snare drum, bass drum and cymbals. I bought them one piece at a time. And before you know it, I was about 16 years old, and I started banging on them and started making gigs.”
His career began in 1942 playing in Boston’s jazz club circuit as a sideman, but it was in 1945 when his professional career took him to New York City at the request of bandleader Luis Russell. From there, he would become one of the most in-demand drummers playing for Lester Young, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holliday, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and countless more. It was during this time that Haynes would be given the nickname “Snap Crackle.”
He would release his first album, Roy Haynes Modern Group, via Swing Records back in 1955 and would release two more albums in the same year, Busman’s Holiday and Jazz Abroad, a split album with Quincy Jones, who passed away on November 3 at the age of 91.