Roy Haynes

Roy Owen Haynes (March 13, 1925 – November 12, 2024) was an American jazz drummer. In the 1950s, he was given the nickname "Snap Crackle" for his distinctive snare drum sound and musical vocabulary. He is among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career spanning more than eight decades, he played swing, bebop, jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He is considered to be a pioneer of jazz drumming.

Haynes led bands, including the Hip Ensemble. His albums Fountain of Youth and Whereas were nominated for a Grammy Award. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999.

Career

Haynes was born on March 13, 1925, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, to Gustavas and Edna Haynes, immigrants from Barbados. His younger brother, Michael E. Haynes, became an important leader in the African American community in Massachusetts, working with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, representing Roxbury in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and for forty years serving as pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church. King had been a member at the church while he pursued his doctoral degree at Boston University.

Haynes made his professional debut in 1942 in Boston and began his full-time professional career in 1945. From 1947 to 1949 he worked with saxophonist Lester Young, In the 1950s he was given the nickname "Snap Crackle". In the 1960s, he was a member of the John Coltrane Quartet, often working as a sub for drummer Elvin Jones. In 1990, he co-led the album Question and Answer with Pat Metheny. Haynes led bands including the Hip Ensemble.

A tribute song was recorded by Jim Keltner and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, and he appeared on stage with the Allman Brothers Band in 2006 and Page McConnell of Phish in 2008. "Age seems to have just passed him by," Watts observed. "He's eighty-three and in 2006 he was voted Best Contemporary Jazz Drummer [in Modern Drummer magazine 's readers' poll]. He's amazing."

In 2008, Haynes voiced a DJ for the fictional classic jazz radio station, Jazz Nation Radio 108.5 on the open-world video game Grand Theft Auto IV. His last album, Roy-Alty, was released in 2011.

Personal life His son Graham Haynes is a cornetist; another son Craig Holiday Haynes and grandson Marcus Gilmore are both drummers.

Haynes was known to celebrate his birthdays on stage and in later years at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City. His 95th birthday celebration in 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On November 12, 2024, following a short illness, Haynes died at age 99 in Nassau County, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island.

Awards and honors A Life in Time – The Roy Haynes Story was named by The New Yorker magazine as one of the Best Boxed Sets of 2007 and was nominated for an award by the Jazz Journalist's Association. WKCR-FM, New York, surveyed Haynes's career in 301 hours of programming, January 11–23, 2009. Esquire named Roy Haynes one of the best-dressed men in America in 1960, along with Fred Astaire, Miles Davis, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant. In 1995, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts named Haynes as a NEA Jazz Master. Haynes received honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music (1991), and the New England Conservatory of Music (2004), as well as a Peabody Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, in 2012. He was inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame in 2004. On October 9, 2010, he was awarded the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. In 2001, Haynes's album Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker was nominated for the 44th Annual Grammy Awards as Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

On December 22, 2010, Haynes was named a recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and he received the award at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception of the 54th Annual Grammy Awards on February 11, 2012. In 2019, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jazz Foundation of America at the 28th Annual Loft Party. Year Result Award Category Work 1988 Grammy Award Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Group 2002 Grammy Award Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2003 DownBeat Critics Poll Drums 2004 DownBeat Critics Poll Hall of Fame 2004 DownBeat Critics Poll Drums 2007 Grammy Award Best Jazz Instrumental Solo 2008 DownBeat Critics Poll Drums 2009 DownBeat Critics Poll Drums 2010 DownBeat Critics Poll Drums 2012 Grammy Award Lifetime Achievement Award Jazz Abroad (Mercury, 1956) – recorded in 1953. split album with Quincy Jones. We Three with Paul Chambers & Phineas Newborn (New Jazz, 1959) – recorded in 1958 Just Us (New Jazz, 1960) Out of the Afternoon (Impulse!, 1962) Cracklin' with Booker Ervin (New Jazz, 1963) Cymbalism (New Jazz, 1963). Hip Ensemble (Mainstream, 1971) Senyah (Mainstream, 1972) Thank You Thank You (Galaxy, 1977) Vistalite (Galaxy, 1979) – recorded in 1977 Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker (Dreyfus Jazz, 2001) – Grammy-nominated album

Compilations Fountain of Youth (Dreyfus Jazz, 2004) – Grammy-nominated album