Roy Haynes, versatile jazz drummer, Long Islander, dies at 99

Roy Haynes, the powerful and prolific jazz drummer whose career stretched from the swing era of the 1940s to the fusion era of the 1970s, and surged in the 1990s as he began collecting Grammys, medals, titles and other honors, has died. He was 99.

Haynes died  Tuesday after a brief illness on the South Shore of Nassau County, according to The New York Times. He lived in Baldwin, voting records showed.

With a sharp snare and a propulsive energy that earned him the nickname "Snap Crackle," Haynes was both a pioneer and a pillar of jazz as the genre went through some of its most important iterations. He played with giants, from sax legends Lester Young and Charlie Parker to pianist Thelonious Monk, and became one himself, influencing drummers like fellow postwar jazz greats Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette, as well as the Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts.

Haynes also had a taste for high style, either from the cars he drove (he once owned both a yellow Cadillac and a black Jaguar) or the clothes he wore (in 1960 Haynes made Esquire magazine’s list of the best-dressed men in America.) The cover of his final album, 2011’s "Roy-Alty," featured a bald, youthful-looking Haynes sporting a bejeweled bracelet and wicked black sunglasses.

"We’ve lost an absolute icon, an incredible innovator on the instrument," said Tom Manuel, founder of The Jazz Loft, a nonprofit in Stony Brook focused on jazz education and preservation.

"Roy didn’t just play the drums well," Manuel said, "He pushed the sound and the approach to jazz drumming forward by leaps and bounds."

Roy Owen Haynes was born March 13, 1925, in Boston, to parents who had emigrated from Barbados. Already a working drummer in his teens, Haynes landed a touring gig that brought him to New York, where he became a sought-after sideman. He worked with Young from 1947 to 1949, with Parker from 1949 to 1952 and with jazz vocalist and pianist Sarah Vaughan, from 1953 to 1958.

Having established himself as one of bebop’s premier drummers, Haynes pushed forward into more abstract and experimental realms. He figured on McCoy Tyner’s "Reaching Fourth" (1963), Jackie McLean’s "Destination ... Out!" (1964) and Chick Corea’s "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs" (1968). Haynes was also an occasional contributor to the John Coltrane Quartet, and played with the group at the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival.

As jazz-rock fusion became the next wave, Haynes formed Hip Ensemble, a funkified outfit that released an eponymous 1971 album. He racked up yet more sideman credits during the 1970s and ‘80s on albums with Pharoah Sanders, Dave Brubeck, Alice Coltrane, Art Pepper, Red Garland, Michel Petrucciani and Pat Metheny. In the 1990s, Haynes kept adding to his already lengthy list of albums as a bandleader or co-leader.

In a 1990 review of Haynes’ quartet at Condon’s in Manhattan, Newsday’s Stuart Troup praised the drummer’s powerful playing and marveled at his relevance.

"Haynes carries plenty of history, but his music isn’t suffocated by it," Troup wrote, adding, "he remains — pound for pound — as weighty and musical as any drummer alive."

Haynes’ many accolades would ultimately include two competitive Grammys, a lifetime achievement Grammy, an honorary doctorate from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the title of NEA Jazz Master, a Peabody medal and France’s Order of Arts and Letters. He repeatedly topped DownBeat magazine’s critics poll of best drummers, even as he entered his 80s. In 2010, Haynes was inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame.

Haynes could get emotional when talking about his career.  “But," he told Newsday in 1983, "when I look back at the whole picture, it’s beautiful."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman