Roy Haynes’ excellent bop session, from original Swedish Metronome recordings.

Roy Haynes was a member of Lionel Hampton’s band when the band toured Europe. At the time, Famous Swedish label Metronome recorded so many sessions by the members of Lionel Hampton band. This is one of them.

As far as I know, this LP is Roy Haynes’ first leader session through his entire career. Featured musicians include members of Lionel Hampton band and top Swedish jazz artists. The result was superb – a typical good example of bop sessions in 1954. A few years later these four tracks were reissued on Jazz Abroad coupled with some overseas Quincy Jones sessions.

Roy Haynes was born in Boston, March 13, 1926, and was keenly interested in jazz ever since he can remember. Primarily self-taught, he began to work locally in 1942 with musicians like the Charlie Christian inflected guitarist Tom Brown, bandleader Sabby Lewis, and Kansas City blues-shout alto saxophonist Pete Brown, before getting a call in the summer of 1945 to join legendary bandleader Luis Russell (responsible for much of Louis Armstrong’s musical backing from 1929 to 1933) to play for the dancers at New York’s legendary Savoy Ballroom. When not travelling with Russell, the young drummer spent much time on Manhattan’s 52nd Street and uptown in Minton’s, the legendary incubator of bebop, soaking up the scene.

Haynes was Lester Young’s drummer from 1947 to 1949, worked with Bud Powell and Miles Davis in ’49, became Charlie Parker’s drummer of choice from 1949 to 1953, toured the world with Sarah Vaughan from 1954 to 1959, did numerous extended gigs with Thelonious Monk in 1959-60, made eight recordings with Eric Dolphy in 1960-61, worked extensively with Stan Getz from 1961 to 1965, played and recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet from 1963 to 1965, has intermittently collaborated with Chick Corea since 1968, and with Pat Metheny during the ’90s. He’s been an active bandleader from the late ’50s to the present, featuring artists in performance and on recordings like Phineas Newborn, Booker Ervin, Roland Kirk, George Adams, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, Ralph Moore and Donald Harrison. A perpetual top three drummer in the Downbeat Readers Poll Awards, he won the Best Drummer honors in 1996, and in that year received the prestigious French Chevalier des l’Ordres Artes et des Lettres.

Another nice one from “If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger” ¦” 

(18 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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