12 Facts About Roy Haynes

Roy Haynes is among the most recorded drummers in jazz.

Roy Haynes is considered to be a pioneer of jazz drumming.

Roy Haynes was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999.

Roy Haynes made his professional debut in 1942 in Boston and began his full-time professional career in 1945.

Roy Haynes recorded at the time with pianist Bud Powell and saxophonists Wardell Gray and Stan Getz.

In 2008, Roy Haynes voiced a DJ for the fictional classic jazz radio station, Jazz Nation Radio 108.5 on the open-world video game Grand Theft Auto IV.

Roy Haynes's son Graham Haynes is a cornetist; another son Craig Holiday Haynes and grandson Marcus Gilmore are both drummers.

Roy Haynes was known to celebrate his birthdays on stage and in later years at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City.

On November 12,2024, following a short illness, Roy Haynes died at age 99 in Nassau County, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island.

In 1994 Roy Haynes was awarded the Danish Jazzpar Prize, and in 1996 the French government knighted him with the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top literary and artistic honor.

Roy Haynes received honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music, and the New England Conservatory of Music, as well as a Peabody Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, in 2012.

Roy Haynes was inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame in 2004.