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