RIP Roy Haynes

The last old master drummer has died, Roy Haynes, at age 99. He was the last of the “magnificent seven” (coined by Lenny White): Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams. He, Elvin and Tony especially are the real triumvirate of modern guys. He was a very slick, modern player from the beginning— he plays a lot of the same stuff on his early records that you hear later on. Maybe I can attempt to write a full blown analysis of his playing and influence soon.

I used to listen to this record in my headphones constantly when I was at USC, it's a fitting send off: 

I think the late 80s weren't a real high point for his public profile— this record put him front and center in a lot of people's consciousness:
 

I've written about him and transcribed him pretty extensively in ~13 years of writing this site, I suggest you spool through that. I also have an e-book of 5 transcriptions.

And here's a very short list of recommended listening:
 

Miles Davis - & Horns

Thelonious Monk - Misterioso

Roy Haynes - Out Of The Afternoon, We Three, Cracklin', Hip Ensemble

Oliver Nelson - Blues And The Abstract Truth

Steve Lacy - The Straight Horn
McCoy Tyner - Reaching Fourth

John Coltrane - Selflessness Featuring My Favorite Things

Gary Burton - Duster, Like Minds

Chick Corea - Now He Sings Now He Sobs, Trio Music, Trio Music Live

McCoy Tyner - Blues For Coltrane

Pat Metheny - Question & Answer

There's a comprehensive discography here— I'll be going through that and filling in some gaps in my listening. 

Very occasional quote of the day: religion

“This is my religion. I take long breaks now when I don't perform and I am not myself when I am not performing.”

- Roy Haynes

h/t Sheet Music Library 

Transcription: Roy Haynes - Bad News Blues - 03

Part 3 of Roy Haynes playing Bad News Blues on his record Cracklin'. Booker Ervin's tenor solo includes a chorus of stop time, two choruses of blowing, then he trades choruses with Roy. This is the two choruses of blowing, starting at 3:59. I've included the two measures of fill leading into the blowing, and what he does at the beginning of the trading. 

Here are links to part 1 and part 2 of this transcription. 

Haynes gives the impression of being very linear with his snare drum and bass drum, but this is very layered at times— he'll play the snare and bass at the same time, accenting the bass and ghosting the snare. He accents the snare before or after the bass drum. See measures 10-12 and 18-20. 

So he has very fine control of his left hand dynamics independent of what else he's doing. Interestingly, his left hand rhythms are largely non-indepenent— often they're simply in unison with his right hand. 

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Transcription: Roy Haynes - Bad News Blues - 02

Part 2 of Roy Haynes playing Bad News Blues on his record Cracklin'. This is Ron Matthews's piano solo, starting at 1:51— four choruses, 48 bars. 

Things like this are a little bit of an archeology project. We're not just looking for comping ideas, we're looking at when he plays in the phrase, and what for— is he supporting the groove, is outlining a phrase, is he conversing with the soloist, what. And to some extent how— what's the logic for how he's executing it physically. As I said last time, Roy is often real economical with how he coordinates things— very linear, with lots of unisons. So I look carefully we he layers things in a more independent/complicated way, like how did that come about? 

The cymbal rhythm is pushing towards a dotted 8th/16th interpretation here. The swing 8ths generally are not perfectly squared off triplets. He plays light backbeats much of the time. If we're checking where he's accenting with his comping, he plays a lot of &s of 4, relatively fewer &s of 3, not much on the & of 2 or 1, except as a continuation of something he was doing in the previous measure. 

It's telling how he plays the 16th note comping in bars 6 and 16— he plays the full beat of 16ths, RLRL, ghosting that second R on the cymbal. Clearly something that evolved naturally, where most of us are sitting down with Chapin and working out our 16th note timing impeccably vs. the straight cymbal rhythm. 

There are a couple of spots where he apparently plays the open hihat with his left hand, which involve some quick moves from the snare drum. Possibly he's splashing it with his foot, and I'm just hearing the attack from the ride cymbal, which he plays through that. Or maybe he's really quick getting his left hand to the hihat, and it's something he doesn't. It fully doesn't really matter. 

That lick in the last two bars of the transcription is one that's worth learning on its own.  

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Transcription: Roy Haynes - Bad News Blues - 01

Roy Haynes playing Bad News Blues, from his album Cracklin'. We'll be seeing more of this one, there's a lot of interest in this recording. Playing a tune like this some people might simplify and slam out the groove. A bandleader calling something like this might ask for a shuffle— which Roy is decidedly not playing. He sketches out a shuffle at times; generally he's playing very loose and modern, and he absolutely swings.

...we saw something like this with Idris Muhammad awhile back— a groove situation where he was playing with a lot of freedom. We have more freedom than we may think, so long as the groove is there. 

I've just transcribed the head in and out— the tune is just a two bar riff over a 12 bar blues form. 

The important accents there are the & of 4 / & of 1, which Roy only hits a couple of times. When he does play them, he sets up the & of 4 with a little fill. But mostly he hits the 1 and the 4 in the first measure— often the accent on 4 is held through the 1 of the second measure. The last two beats of the phrase are usually some kind of fill.  

The transcription: 

Play that 16th triplet lick as singles.

I think of Roy generally as an economical drummer, in the sense of being “non-independent.” I'm accustomed to seeing lots of unisons, lots of linear things, not a lot of layered independence. That's mostly the case here, but there are a couple of spots where things layer in an unusual way— see the end of bar 8, and bar 11. 

In measure 19 there's something happening with the left hand that probably falls pretty naturally with traditional grip; matched grip you'd have to contrive some kind of push pull thing to play that. Which would be stupid, because it's really nothing. The important thing there is the accents. 

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WSRHWL addendum!

A couple of pages to go with my wild, sprawling, scattershot world's shortest Roy Haynes waltz lesson. That contains a lot of raw concepts for someone who is listening to a lot of Roy Haynes to come up with their own version of his kind of thing, in 3/4 time. Or a 3/4 feel in 4/4 time. 

Here I've given some sticking patterns, put them on a cymbal and snare drum, and then changed them a little bit: 

Like a lot of my stuff, the point is to work through a lot of basically equally-difficult things in one session. See the original WSRHWL for suggestions on where to take these. Briefly: 

•  Add stock rhythms with the feet: BD on 1, HH on 2, or 2 and 3
•  Add BD along with some or all of the cymbal notes. 

There are some more advanced options involving the left foot:

• Play the LF in unison with the LH, or replacing the LH, or replacing the LH on some notes. 
• Along with whatever you do with the LF, add BD along with some or all of the cymbal notes.   

Some things to try. Listen to a lot of Roy and play them your own way, and don't stop for mistakes.    

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Daily best music in the world: 80s McCoy and Roy

I've probably posted this before, I don't care. A record forgotten by everyone, released on Impulse! about the time I was going to school in LA, at USC. I listened to this a lot, and it got me into trouble in combo rehearsal, because I wanted to kick this level of ass all the time. There were some fussy wind players— I don't know what they took up the instrument for. 

McCoy Tyner and Roy Haynes in particular are in pure freight train mode. How are you going to play a Coltrane tribute record any other way. It's not about chops, it's about energy. There's a lot of joy here: 

 

The bass drum sound is something else, it's a wide open 20", and they weren't shy about putting it right there in the mix. Cymbal sounds are high and bright, and he punches a lot of accents, moving to the crash cymbal/s a lot. On Pharoah Sanders's solo on Bluesin' For John C. he's hanging out on a little cymbal, maybe a 16? It's a wild sound. 

And you don't hear tom sounds like this much any more, it's like a higher version of a Billy Cobham sound— it's an energy sound, not a power sound. Compare with the pretty, controlled, mannered tones people are into now. The tom tom lead in he plays on The Promise is what we're supposed to be doing, playing exciting shit. 

The snare drum is that raging Roy Haynes metallic sound of course. I should also note the hihats, which are on the heavier side, and very present— I've used that sloshy cutting sound a lot, I also associate it with Al Foster and with Terry Bozzio playing with Zappa, to some extent with 70s Tony Williams. 

Daily best music in the world: Roy Haynes with Charlie Parker LIVE

This is pretty amazing. Rough sounding live tape of Charlie Parker in 1951, with Roy Haynes on drums... sounding basically like any other subsequent time in his career. Incredibly modern playing for 1951. 

h/t to Mark Stryker of Jazz Times.

Transcription: Roy Haynes 8s

Hot on the heels of that “too perfect” post, here's a great example of what I'm talking about in terms of playing with an edge: Roy Haynes trading 8s with Chick Corea on Rhythm-a-ning, from Chick's album Trio Music. I guess we could call this the high late phase of Roy's career— he's playing a big, live drum set, very aggressively and spontaneously. I don't know why everybody doesn't play this way— with this kind of energy. 

The tempo here is about quarter note = 290, give or take. Right in his wheel house for killing it— it's about the same tempo as some things on Pat Metheny's Question & Answer, and Matrix on Chick Corea's Now He Sings Now He Sobs. That's Roy's tempo. The transcription begins at 3:19, and then I've just written out the drum solo breaks. 

Like I said, big drum set: I think there are three tom toms, two crashes, a swish cymbal, plus two timpani. He's very economical in terms of orchestrating on the instrument— lots of diddles, some singles, lots of bass drum and cymbal in unison. Usually he only plays one thing at a time, no independent parts, ostinato parts, or vestiges of ostinatos, as we might see in other people's playing. None of this requires any particular chops. 

In the second 8, on measures 14-17, he may be playing those unaccented notes on the shaft of the hihat stand— there's a different sound there. 

It's a free download, but if you're not a regular contributor on Patreon or PayPal, think about sending a couple/few bucks: 

Venmo: @Todd-Bishop-16
PayPal: toddbishop [at] cruiseshipdrummer [dot] com

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Everyone should own this record, but here's a link for it on that exploiter site, Spotify. But go to a store and buy it new. 

Transcription: Roy Haynes feature

UPDATE: I have extreme quality readers. Jim in the comments pointed out a bunch of errors in this, and figured out the insane Mystery Lick on the second page. The corrected pdf is up now. 

New Arrival is a tune by Nat Adderley, from the record Introducing Nat Adderley, that heavily features Roy Haynes on the drums. He's got a long intro, a solo, some fours, and then a solo break on the head out. It's a nice tight little nightclub arrangement. Haynes is in full blown “snap crackle” mode, and everything is very hip, very slick, very tidy. Except one thing in the middle of the solo where I needed some help from the community (see above) to figure it out.  
 

Most of the running 8th notes are played straight, non-swinging; the syncopated rhythms swing. There are a few spots where both hands are played in unison on the snare and tom, which may not be happening in actuality— there's a lot of sympathetic vibration from the snares, and it can be difficult to tell. None of that is difficult to play, so no harm if the way I wrote it is wrong. He uses a splash cymbal, and there are a few special articulations— at the beginning he muffles the snare drum with his hand, later on there are some cymbal chokes, and pitch bends on the tom toms. He does feather the bass drum sometimes, but it's not really in time.  

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Blogger is being a pain about letting me embed video, so listen here if this record isn't already in your collection. 

Transcription: Roy Haynes - It's Time - drum solo

Here's Roy Haynes's drum solo from the title track of a Jackie McLean record we visited a few months ago, It's Time. The solo begins at 5:31.

Pull up my Cliché Control page and start comparing this with things found in this and some other solos. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of the same stuff. This also contains a lot of patterns in 3, so there's some conceptual overlap with my Roy Haynes waltz lesson.

The tempo on the tune overall moves around a little bit, all within natural tolerances. The last three solos are Herbie Hancock, Cecil McBee, Roy. Herbie's solo starts at ~266, Cecil's solo ends at around 248, Roy's solo ends at around 280 or above. After the horns come in with the head out the tempo settles a little bit.   

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World's shortest Roy Haynes waltz lesson

UPDATE: See the page of practice suggestions for more on this!

Someone on the internet asked me to explain what Roy Haynes is doing on the Chick Corea tune Windows, from the album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, so I wrote up a little lesson on some of the basic elements, on getting started making the approximate vibe:

Listen to the recording, play through the page in all of the suggested ways, then improvise combinations of things to make a continuously developing waltz texture— that's the part that will take some practice; the ideas themselves are not difficult. Vary the dynamics and articulations with your left hand— use buzzes, rim shots, etc. Roy really exaggerates his accents, and tends to put them in odd places.

Obviously there are some other things happening— he plays some triplets between the snare and bass drum, and plays both hands on the snare drum occasionally— usually 3- or 4- stroke ruffs, open, as singles.

To continue developing this beyond the scope of this page, you should be able to play a regular jazz waltz, and have some basic coordination together with that. See Joel Rothman's 3,5, 7, 9, Jazz! or Joe Morello's New Directions in Rhythm for materials. Get my book Syncopation in 3/4 for more practice resources.

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Very occasional quote of the day: Roy on time

“Mingus use to say the damndest thing about me years ago. He'd say, 'Well, Roy Haynes. You don't always play the beat, you  suggest the beat!'

I didn't know what the heck I was doing. But I know that the beat is supposed to be there. If I leave out a beat, it's still there. If I'm playing 8 or 12 bar fills and I play four and a half bars then leave out a bar and a half, that doesn't mean I don't want it to sound like that! But if I'm playing with a horn player sometimes they may get confused. They get hung up because I didn't fill in that bar and a half.

You've got to use a little imagination in there. That bar and a half still counts. I'll come out in the right place, where it should be to make the fill even, and the other players are somewhere else at that point. I didn't always play the beat, which I thought was very good. You don't always have to say ding ding-da ding ding-da ding, you know. It's there! So, if one of those saxophone players has to depend on that, then you know he's not right.

You've got to have that ding-ding-da-ding within yourself. Coltrane had it! Pres had it. Miles has it. So, it's beautiful to play with them, but there are so many other people who don't have that thing and you've got to carry them. How you gonna be inventive and create when you're trying to lift them up?”

— Roy Haynes

Roy Haynes intro - Alto-itis

I'm being very slovenly about posting as things continue being politically crazy. It's a little distracting. So here's something easy: a four bar drum intro played by Roy Haynes on Oliver Nelson's tune Alto-itis, from his record Screamin' the Blues.

It's very straightforward. Roy Haynes accents aggressively, in unusual ways, which gives his playing a lot of energy, and makes him sound non-obvious. I would probably stick the 16th note figures RLRLR or RRLLR— both of them starting with the right hand. Note the presence of our little Philly Joe Jones connective lick in the third measure.

This whole thing is actually just a trick to get you to listen to the SUPER-HIP way he plays on the horn riff that happens several times during the solos— after 1:30 and 3:15:

Transcription: Roy Haynes comping

UPDATE: Download link is fixed!

Did you ever transcribe 72 bars of Roy Haynes, just to realize that all of the really cool stuff was in the NEXT 36 bars? I wanted to do an easy little comping transcription, but with this one I just had to keep going. And that was after I wrote most of a page of another track, before I realized this is the one I wanted to do: Blues For Liz, on Paul Gonsalves's album Cleopatra Feelin' Jazzy. Not obviously a record to immediately grab on seeing it in a record store, but it's great.

The transcription is from Gonsalves's solo, starting at 0:47, and is nine choruses long— 108 bars long.

You could make a serious comping lesson out of this. Most of it is playable, and conceptually clear; there are some things on the last page that would not make sense to try to duplicate. The parts are mostly non-independent— the hands are largely played in unison, both feet are often played in unison. The bass drum is sparse and subtly handled, with relatively few big accents. He often splashes the hihat with his foot— they have a soft sound that blends nicely with the overall sound. His handling of the snare drum is very nuanced, much more than can be communicated in a transcription. He frequently punches the & of 3, or & of 3/& of 4 with a buzzed stroked on the snare drum. He plays that “single stroke four” item quite often.

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Very occasional quote of the day: What “a gig” was

“You didn't get a gig for a weekend, like two days at The Gate. It wasn't like that. We'd stay at a place a week to three weeks, sometimes seven nights a week and five sets a night! At least four or five.

Sometimes if the music was so good we were playing after 4:00 am and the people would still be there! Another thing was that musicians really didn't work steady. When I was with Bird, he would go to Chicago, Detroit or somewhere else for a week. That next week, we didn't necessarily go. The band would come back home until Bird got another gig. So, I started working with other people in between Bird's gigs.”

“The longest period I ever stayed at the Five Spot was with Monk— we'd do like 18 weeks at a time.”

— Roy Haynes, from his 1980 Modern Drummer interview by Scott K. Fish

Daily best music in the world: Roy Haynes Hip Ensemble

Hip Ensemble is Roy Haynes's fusion band that was around for a couple of years around 1970. Or is it just the title of the one record under Roy's name? I don't know, man. Anyone born before the 1990s is accustomed to a measure of uncertainty in life. Whatever: here are a few new bootleg tracks (courtesy of Fabio Baglioni) by this great band, plus part of the albums Hip Ensemble and Senyah, which had (mostly) the same personnel:

Very occasional quote of the day: cymbal selection for bop

Roy Haynes talks about what cymbal used to go with what soloist in the 1940s:


“I just liked the sound of a cymbal with the sax. It was cool with a trumpet, too. Back in the old days we used to play the hi-hat for trumpet players and also for the piano soloist. Now all of the guys want you up there.”


Highly worth reading that entire interview with Christian McBride.

Related: Mel Lewis talks cymbals in his 1985 Modern Drummer interview.

New e-book title: 5 Roy Haynes Solos

Another new transcription e-book available:

5 Roy Haynes Solos

Includes transcribed solos from:

In Walked Bud
Snap Crackle 
All The Things You Are 
Reflection 
Bad News Blues

Only In Walked Bud was previously available on the blog.

Get it now via instant download for tablet or Kindle.

By the way, if you've purchased any of the other e-books, please leave a review on Amazon!

The other e-book titles available currently are:
5 Max Roach Solos | 5 Elvin Jones Transcriptions | 5 Tony Williams Transcriptions | 5 Zigaboo Modeliste Transcriptions | 5 70s Funk Transcriptions | Playing Samba and Bossa Nova

More Bad News

Comping lesson time— here's more of that Roy Haynes track Bad News Blues, this time looking at what Roy is playing during the four choruses of the piano solo. The album is Cracklin', and the pianist here is Ronnie Matthews.

The transcription begins at 1:50 in the recording, or after 33:20 in the video below:

I always put too much information in these transcriptions, so don't get too hung up with the minutia— just get the general idea of what he's playing and make it sound good to you. Don't overplay the 2 and 4 on the snare drum. There's probably more going on with the bass drum than I was able to pick up from the recording. At the very end is a hip lick based on a half note triplet, which you could just memorize and play verbatim at the end of a chorus, exactly as is done here...

By the way, the drum solo from this tune will be available soon in another new e-book of transcriptions— 5 Roy Haynes Solos. Should be ready later in the week...

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