Remembering Roy Haynes with Adam Nussbaum

UKJazz News: Think back to when you first heard Roy Haynes… can you remember your impressions? 

Adam Nussbaum: The first recording I heard with Roy Haynes was probably Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and the Abstract Truth, which had an amazing band with Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans and Paul Chambers. I realised from the music, which was so good, that Roy had that ability to get inside whatever the music was and elevate it. After that, I started hearing him on lots of other recordings. One that really stood out was a gorgeous trumpet quartet record with Booker Little, Scott LaFaro and Wynton Kelly and Tommy Flanagan alternating piano. If you don’t know that record, Booker Little sounds incredible! He had a beautiful quality in his tone and his vocabulary was very special at that time. Then I saw him live for the first time at the Newport Festival in New York with his Hip Ensemble.

The thing about Roy is he had what I would call a ‘signature identity’; a ‘one in a row’. He arrived on the scene already formed with a sound and a personality that was instantly recognisable as his. He tuned his drums on the higher side and his internal drummer was also so strong that he could dance around the time, which kept the music very alive. But I think his greatest gift was that he was blessed with phenomenal ears. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that the best musicians are the people who hear the best. And Roy could hear in the cracks. That’s how he could get inside the music so that, whatever context he was in, he elevated it to a beautiful place. 

I have to refer to something I heard the wonderful drummer Kenny Washington say before Roy passed: What other drummer from the era of the forties would have been able to play on Chick Corea’s Now He Sings, Now He Sobs and sound so hip? He just brought so much life to it. Again, it was his incredible ability to get inside the music which he had from the beginning. 

UKJN: What about his style of drumming do you think makes him so identifiable on recordings?

AN: Some musicians have a lot of information within their vocabulary. But Roy didn’t have an amazing worked-out, traditional vocabulary. He was a self-made guy with his own, and he was able to use it in such a musical and audacious way. It’s not like you can sit down and practice 500 licks Roy Haynes played because there aren’t that many. The truth is, you don’t need a lot of information if you know how to put it anywhere you feel like doing it. 

He was from Boston and kind of set the standard for other drummers from there: Tony Williams, Alan Dawson, Clifford Jarvis and other great drummers that aren’t that well known from up there like Jimmy Zitano, Bobby Ward and Lenny Nelson all had a certain pop and clarity. I think you can hear it regionally with drummers from different places in the country, how each place has its own flavor and accent. It’s especially apparent when you hear drummers from New Orleans, but it’s anywhere you go – New York, Philly, Boston, D.C., Chicago – just like if you travel around the UK, people have different accents. 

UKJN: Are there any personal encounters you would like to share?

AN: Roy was once being interviewed at an International Association for Jazz Education convention, I think by Dan Morgenstern. I was in the audience with several hundred people and raised my hand. He saw me and said, Hey Nussbaum! What do you want?” I said, “Roy, when you were a kid, who was the guy in the hood who inspired you?” I asked him that because I knew there’s always someone early in your development, usually a direct contact, that affects you. His answer was the drummer Herbert Wright, who played with James Reese Europe and later stabbed him! And I said (laughing), “So Roy, that’s where you got that killer instinct!” 

In 1983, I got to play at the White House with Stan Getz, Jim McNeely and Marc Johnson in a concert hosted by Itzhak Perlman. Roy was also there with Chick and Miroslav Vitouš, and Dizzy too with his band. I ended up playing on Roy’s drums and got to hang with him, it was so great. Maybe 25 or 30 years later, I said to him: “Roy, I think I’ve figured you out… ‘You’re from the past, but you were born in the future”. He liked that. He was a real treasure. I feel very fortunate I got to have some nice interactions with him. 

UKJN: He was pretty much still active at 99. Did he ever discuss any secrets to his longevity?

AN: I think if you’re a musician with a natural gift and ability, this is something that’s a life force for you and it helps to keep you alive. I never really got into a discussion with him about it, but he always kept his ears open and always kept his eyes open. This cat was always dressed so slick, he looked so hip all the time. He didn’t take any BS, he cut right to the chase. He was an amazingly open-minded person. Somebody who just seemed to enjoy life. 

You know, there’s a thing old drummers say: “I saw Max [Roach] do it, I saw Philly Joe [Jones] do it, I saw Papa Jo [Jones] do it, I saw Klook (Kenny Clarke) do it. But I saw Haynes and he did it and did it and did it and did it.”(laughs) Which is absolutely true. 

UKJN: For anyone looking to get more familiar with Roy Haynes, which recordings do you recommend they begin with?

AN: As far as recordings, other than the ones I’ve already mentioned, there was that great one he first did on Prestige with Phineas Newborn and Paul Chambers, We Three. Another one I heard early on was a great recording with McCoy Tyner and Henry Grimes, Reaching Fourth, that came out on Impulse!. You hear that wonderful record he did with Stan Getz, Focus, where Roy is playing along with the strings, that’s a beautiful piece of music that Stan was improvising over and Roy was just so in there. Of course, the things he did with Trane when he was subbing for Elvin in 1963 were great – on Transition, he plays on “Dear Lord” and there’s that great version of “Dear Old Stockholm” – and then there’s also a snippet of recordings from May ’65 that originally came out on an LP called To the Beat of a Different Drum as part of a series called ‘The Mastery of John Coltrane’. That stuff is really incredible because he had a very different kind of sound to Elvin – they used to call him Mr. Snap Crackle – and it brought out another aspect of what Trane did. He also was associated for many years with the incredible Sarah Vaughan.

Thank god for recordings! Every time I heard him it was so wonderful and inspiring. I mean, who else in this world went from playing with Louis Armstrong to Pat Metheny and everyone in between? It’s hard to imagine who he couldn’t play with.

God bless him, man. Every time I think of him, I’m just gonna smile and, to quote that record he made in 1977, say thank you thank you. 

Charlie Rees is an English saxophonist, composer/arranger & journalist. He is also the Assistant Editor of UKJN.