Roy Haynes, Pioneering and Prolific Jazz Drummer, Dead at 99

Roy Haynes, the prolific and proficient jazz drummer who recorded alongside Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ray Charles, and Sonny Rollins, has died at the age of 99.

Haynes’ daughter Leslie Haynes-Gilmore confirmed her father’s death Tuesday to the Guardian, adding he died following a short illness.

A cutting-edge pioneer in the genre — equally adept at swing and bebop, avant-garde, and fusion — Haynes appeared on countless jazz classics over a career that began in the early 1940s and didn’t wind down until the drummer was in his mid-nineties.

The Boston-born Haynes’ career began with stints performing in bands led by Lester Young, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, and pianist Bud Powell, with Haynes featuring on the latter’s 1952 jazz classic The Amazing Bud Powell.

The Fifties found “Snap Crackle,” Haynes’ nickname, performing alongside Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, fellow drummer Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Burrell, and George Shearing, as well as launching his own career as bandleader with 1954’s Busman’s Holiday. Two years later, Haynes released 1956’s Jazz Abroad, a split LP with Quincy Jones, who died last week; Jones would also enlist Haynes for the sessions for Ray Charles’ 1961 album Genius + Soul = Jazz.

The following decade, Haynes played a trio of renowned Eric Dolphy albums (Outward Bound, Out There, and Far Cry), John Coltrane’s Impressions, Jackie McLean’s Destination… Out!, Andrew Hill’s Black Fire, and LPs by Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp, and Roland Kirk.

A recipient of both the Grammys’ and the Jazz Foundation of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Haynes won his first Grammy in 1989 when Tyner’s Blues for Coltrane earned Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Group. Haynes’ own Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album in 2001.

Pat Metheny, one of Haynes’ many collaborators, called the drummer his “number one hero on earth” in a 2001 interview. “Roy is the human manifestation of whatever it is that the word ‘hip’ was supposed to mean before it just became a word,” Metheny said. “Always in the moment, always in this time, eternal and classic and at the same time totally nonchalant about it.”

In a 2006 interview for Jazziz, Haynes spoke about his determination to always remain one step ahead. “Now, if I played rudiments and all that shit, they’re hip to that shit,” he said. “So I come up with the Roy Haynes shit, man, and it blew all of their minds.”