"One can hear the essences of all of those bandstands, concert jobs, dances, parties and jam sessions in the freedom of his beat and command of tempo," critic Stanley Crouch, a drummer himself, wrote for the online magazine Slate. "Haynes has no date on the way he plays. It is and always was contemporary."
His playing from the '40s, when bebop was becoming the principal jazz dialect, still sounds remarkable. Haynes helped transform the drums from their traditional time-keeping role into a crisp assemblage of percussion and cymbal sounds designed to keep the music alive and thriving.
Haynes' far-reaching résumé boasted expertise in most of the stylistic areas of jazz history. Called upon to play New Orleans music, swing, bebop, avant-garde, fusion, modal jazz, jazz rock, acid-jazz and more, he responded with extraordinary skill and imagination.
His remarkable longevity as a performer was underscored over the decades whenever he played at New York City's venerable jazz club Birdland. In December 1949, he was the drummer with the group that opened the room - the Charlie Parker Quintet, with guest vocalist Harry Belafonte.
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