Roy Owen Haynes (March 13, 1925 – November 12, 2024) was an American jazz drummer.^[1] He was among the most recorded drummers in jazz. In a career lasting over 80 years, he played swing, bebop, jazz fusion, and avant-garde jazz. He is considered to have been a pioneer of jazz drumming. “Snap Crackle” was a nickname given to him in the 1950s.^[2]

Haynes led bands such as the Hip Ensemble.^[1] His albums Fountain of Youth^[3] and Whereas^[4] were nominated for a Grammy Award.^[5][6] He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999.^[7] His son Graham Haynes is a cornetist; another son Craig Holiday Haynes and grandson Marcus Gilmore are both drummers.^[8]

Haynes was born in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts, to Gustavas and Edna Haynes, immigrants from Barbados.^[9] His younger brother, Michael E. Haynes, became an important leader in the African American community of 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, where King had been a member while he pursued his doctoral degree at Boston University.^[10]

Haynes made his professional debut in 1942 in his native Boston, and began his full-time professional career in 1945.^[11] From 1947 to 1949 he worked with saxophonist Lester Young,^[9] and from 1949 to 1952 was a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker‘s quintet.^[9] He also recorded at the time with pianist Bud Powell and saxophonists Wardell Gray and Stan Getz.^[9] From 1953 to 1958, he toured with singer Sarah Vaughan and recorded with her.^[12][13]

A tribute song was recorded by Jim Keltner and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones,^[14] and he appeared on stage with the Allman Brothers Band in 2006^[15] and Page McConnell of Phish in 2008.^[16] “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.”^[17]

In 2008, Haynes lent his voice to the open-world video game Grand Theft Auto IV, to voice himself as the DJ for the fictional classic jazz radio station, Jazz Nation Radio 108.5.^[18]

Haynes was known to celebrate his birthdays on stage, in later years at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City.^[19] In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, his 95th birthday celebration was cancelled.^[20]

On November 12, 2024, Haynes died at the age of 99 in Nassau County, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island.^[21][22]

A Life in Time – The Roy Haynes Story was named by The New Yorker magazine as one of the Best Boxed Sets of 2007^[23] and was nominated for an award by the Jazz Journalist’s Association.^[24]

WKCR-FM, New York,^[25] surveyed Haynes’s career in 301 hours of programming, January 11–23, 2009.^[26]

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.^[13]

In 1994, Haynes was awarded the Danish Jazzpar prize, and in 1996 the French government knighted him with the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s top literary and artistic honor.^[5] In 1995, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts named Haynes as a NEA Jazz_Master.^[27] Haynes received honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music (1991),^[28] and the New England Conservatory (2004),^[29] as well as a Peabody Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, in 2012.^[30] He was inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame in 2004.^[31] 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.^[32]

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.^[33]

On December 22, 2010, he was named a recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences,^[34] and he received the award at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception of the 54th Annual Grammy Awards on February 11, 2012.^[35]

In 2019, Haynes was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jazz Foundation of America at the 28th Annual Loft Party.^[36]

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Fountain of Youth (Dreyfus Jazz, 2004) – Grammy-nominated album
• Quiet Fire (Galaxy, 2004) – reissue of Thank You Thank You (1977) and Vistalite (1977)
• A Life in Time: The Roy Haynes Story (Dreyfus Jazz, 2007)[3CD + DVD-Video] – Grammy-nominated track included

In recorded year order

• Roy Haynes – Featured Musician (Drummer Cafe)
• Drummerworld article
• Interview
• Concert Review
• Interview for the NAMM Oral History Program (2008)
• Roy Haynes discography at Discogs
• Roy Haynes at IMDb