Haynes, Roy (Owen)
(Roxbury, MA, 13 March 1926)
Drummer
He began his professional career in Boston,
where in 1944 he worked in swing groups with Frankie Newton and Pete Brown and
also played with lesser-known big bands and dixieland
groups. Two periods with Luis Russell's orchestra (1945-6, 1946-7) marked his
only association with a significant big band. A natural and extremely flexible
percussionist, he thereafter provided idiomatic accompaniments in many styles
as a member of swing, bop, modal-jazz, free-jazz, and jazz-rock groups. Without
ever achieving fame in his own right, he worked with such leading musicians as
Lester Young (1947-9), Bud Powell and Miles Davis (both briefly, 1949), Charlie
Parker (1949-52), Sarah Vaughan (1953-8, Thelonious
Monk (1958), and Eric Dolphy (1960). From 1961 to
1965 he was the principal substitute for Elvin Jones in John Coltrane's group,
and in 1960 he founded his own bop group, which later, under the name the Hip
Ensemble, turned towards the jazz-rock idiom; among its distinguished sidemen
were George Adams (1969-73) and Hannibal Peterson (c. 1972). Haynes has also
appeared intermittently with Stan Getz and Gary Burton from the 1960s. He
recorded with Duke Jordan in New York (1975) and while on tour in Japan (1976),
and then spent a brief but intense period of activity in recording studios,
taking part in sessions with Nick Brignola (1977-8),
Burton, Hank Jones, and Art Pepper (all 1978), Ted Curson
(1978-9), and Joe Albany and Horace Tapscott (both
1979). In 1979 he performed with Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport
and Monterey jazz festivals, and in
1981, with Miroslav Vitous,
he became a member of Chick Corea's group Trio Music.
While continuing to tour internationally on an intermittent basis with Corea (playing timpani as well as a standard drum set),
Haynes led bop quartets in New York
in 1985-6.
Barry Kernfeld
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, © Macmillan Reference Ltd
1988