One of the first significant engagements taken on by the great US jazz drummer Roy Haynes, who has died aged 99, was a lengthy stint with Lester Young. After two years in that role, from 1947 until 1949, he replaced Max Roach in Charlie Parker’s quintet. Then, in the early 1960s, John Coltrane chose him whenever his regular drummer, Elvin Jones, was elsewhere. Before any of that happened, Haynes had a fill-in job behind the drums in Louis Armstrong’s big band.
To have been employed by the four major stylistic innovators of jazz over a period stretching from pre-swing to post-bebop made Haynes unique. Perhaps just as remarkably, he carried on by playing and recording with such younger pace-setters as the guitarist Pat Metheny and the bassist Dave Holland.
Interviewing him in the 90s, I asked Haynes whether working for so varied a collection of leaders involved them laying down what they wanted. He was not amused, taking the view that people chose him because they knew he would deliver, and that they would therefore let him get on with his own way of doing things.
Whether or not the music revolved around a tune’s repetitive cycle, Haynes listened intently and tailored his accompaniment to suit the soloist. Where his near-contemporary Art Blakey would create patterns of an ever-increasing intensity, Haynes established more of a dialogue, expertly filling in the space that soloists left, but without directing them. In the process he developed an identifiable crispness based around varied sequences of paradiddles that became a trademark and earned him the nickname “Snap Crackle”.
It was a characteristic that attracted the interest of many younger musicians in the post-bebop era.
Throughout the 60s Haynes occasionally put a quartet together that featured the saxophonists Booker Ervin and Frank Strozier, along with the multi-instrumentalist phenomenon Roland Kirk (later known as Rahsaan Roland Kirk). He worked on and off with Stan Getz and also with Chick Corea. One version of the Getz quartet included, on vibraphone, the young Gary Burton, who chose Haynes to be drummer in a quartet of his own that made waves by blending jazz techniques with elements of country music and rock well before fusion became fashionable.
In the 70s Haynes formed the longstanding occasional group Hip Ensemble, of which fusion was definitely a part, although without controlling its overall textures.
Increasingly he was in demand among top musicians from a new generation. The trio with Haynes alongside Metheny and Holland turned up at the Brecon jazz festival in 1992 and all three were part of Burton’s album Like Minds (1998), with Corea the obvious choice on piano.
Haynes played and recorded with his own trio, featuring the pianist Danilo Pérez and the bassist John Patitucci, and from the mid-80s onwards regularly convened a quartet for tours, often appearing on the international circuit. His tenor saxophonist was the British-born Ralph Moore, succeeded by Craig Handy, with David Kikoski at the piano and Ed Howard or James Genus on bass.
As the quartet’s leader, and in an ingenious counter to his undirectional approach at the drums, he might tailor arrangements to give soloists a built-in structural development to aim at, his version of Corea’s homage to Bud Powell an outstanding example. He adapted Al Jolson’s Anniversary song for jazz, in a version that was simultaneously dreamy and driving and always a hit with audiences.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Haynes also formed the first of his Fountain of Youth quartets, designed to sponsor new jazz talent. Perhaps he consciously decided to fill the gap left by Blakey and Jones, drummer-leaders whose later groups had functioned almost as finishing schools. Among those who benefited were the saxophonists Marcus Strickland and Jaleel Shaw, and the pianist Martin Bejerano. Haynes’s last album, Roy-Alty, released in 2011, featured the Fountain of Youth band.
Haynes was born in Roxbury, a suburb of Boston in Massachusetts, where his parents, Edna (nee Payne) and Gustavus, had settled after emigrating from Barbados. His father, who worked for Standard Oil, sang in a choir and, after noticing his son “banging on everything around the house”, he bought Roy a set of drums. His great inspiration was Jo Jones, who was the drummer with Count Basie.
After early jobs around Boston, a well-regarded alto saxophonist of the period, Charlie Holmes, recommended Haynes to the veteran bandleader Luis Russell. Without even an audition, Russell sent the rail fare for him to travel to New York, and Haynes spent the next two years with Russell playing for dancers in such legendary halls as the Savoy Ballroom. In between his subsequent jobs with Young and Parker, Haynes worked briefly alongside both Miles Davis and Powell.
Despite his prowess, Haynes did not register immediately with critics or public to the same extent as Roach or Blakey, and during the 50s, when that pair were setting the pace as drummer-leaders, he spent much of his time as accompanist to Sarah Vaughan. Towards the end of the decade, however, he worked with Thelonious Monk, then riding high on all fronts, and began to cement his forward-looking credentials by appearing on the first recordings under Eric Dolphy’s name. Shortly afterwards, Dolphy linked up with Coltrane, the connection with Haynes was formed, and Haynes’s journey to being recognised as the godfather of post-bebop drumming had begun.
Honours included honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music (1991) and the New England Conservatory (2004), lifetime achievement awards from the Recording Academy in 2011 and the Jazz Foundation of America in 2019, and two Grammys, one for his part on the Blues for Coltrane tribute album (1989) and another for Like Minds (2000), an album with Burton, Corea, Metheny and Holland.
In older age, having reached the stage when he could choose times and places to work, Haynes was able to indulge other interests, such as entering his sports cars in competition shows – he was among the select owners of the gull-wing Bricklin SV-1 model with which he won a trophy for style, an award appropriate for someone previously included in Esquire magazine’s list of the best-dressed men in America.
His wife, Jesse, died in 1979. He is survived by their two sons, Graham and Craig, and a daughter, Leslie, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
• Roy Owen Haynes, drummer, born 13 March 1925; died 12 November 2024
