A Landmark Era Slowly Makes Its Final Exit

A short blog that started as a social media post, in honor of not just a great artist but the slow passing of a landmark era in music.

He’s hardly a household name in the 21^st century, but drummer Roy Haynes was a giant of what might be the greatest period of original, innovative and groundbreaking American music ever – the bebop/hard bop/free jazz era of the 1940s-1960s (and that’s coming from a guy raised on classic 60s/70s rock).

Roy passed away at 99 yesterday. It was another of those instances of not knowing he was even alive until he no longer was.

Roy Haynes made his bones (as they say) in the latter stages of the 1930s/40s swing era playing with Lester Young. He rose to the top ranks of jazz playing alongside bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk in the late 40s/early 50s, appeared on landmark hard bop recordings with John Coltrane and others, became a leading light of the free/experimental jazz movement of the 60s, and remained a top drummer during the fusion period of the 1970s and 80s playing with Pat Matheny and Chick Corea.  Roy kept in the game playing with contemporary artists like Christian McBride well into this century.

Whether you’re a jazz fan or not, artists like Roy Haynes had a huge impact on musical forms across the world, right up to this minute. You can’t find a corner of the globe where their influence is not felt. You can’t find a musical genre that didn’t learn from the way they expanded the boundaries of music, from early rock n’ roll and R&B up through modern-day hip hop, pop techno and world music.

There aren’t a lot of these groundbreaking 40s/50s jazz artists around anymore. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who’s 94. Soon they’ll all be gone, and maybe the world will notice and maybe it won’t. But you can bet that their music will still be heard and played 200 years from now, just like you still hear the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

The photo here is one of the most famous in jazz history. It shows an All-Star lineup of jazz immortals, with Charlie Parker on sax, Thelonious Monk on piano, Charles Mingus on bass – and Roy Haynes on drums.

If you want a sketch of Roy’s work, here’s a link to a YouTube video of him playing with John Coltrane’s quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963.