Jazz world mourns pioneering saxophonist Lou Donaldson and drummer Roy Haynes

Two of jazz’s most enduring pioneers have died after incredibly prolific and influential careers. Acclaimed saxophonist Lou Donaldson died on Saturday, November 9 on the age of 98. Donaldson’s friend and one other jazz great, drummer Roy Haynes, died on Tuesday on the age of 99. No reason for death for any of the musicians was given.

Born in Badin, North Carolina in 1926, Donaldson attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and served in World War II before becoming a part of the post-war bebop scene within the late Forties and early Fifties. Inspired by Charlie Parker to desert the clarinet in favor of the alto saxophone, Donaldson became considered considered one of the best within the genre, although he also reportedly suffered from severe asthma. Over the course of his decades-long profession, he has performed and recorded with jazz icons Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, Art Blakey, Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver, George Benson and more. He also released dozens of albums because the band’s leader, including the favored LPs “Alligator Bogaloo,” “Lou Donaldson at His Best” and “Wailing With Lou.” His last release was 1992’s “Birdseed” on the Lou Donaldson Quintet.

According to “Jazz has to hit a certain point,” Donaldson explained in his autobiography New York Times. “There’s a rhythm you have to hit, and if you play enough music around musicians and play enough in front of people, you’ll figure out where that is.”

Donaldson’s “warm, fluid style,” as he describes Related presscombining elements of blues, pop and soul. His musical influences prolonged beyond the world of jazz, and his compositions and performances were sampled by hip-hop artists similar to Kanye West, Pete Rock, Nas and De La Soul. In 2022, the boulevard in his hometown of Badin was renamed after the saxophonist. Donaldson died in Daytona Beach, Florida; although he was known to have fathered two daughters, further details about his survivors was not immediately available.

In 2013 Donaldson has been named a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment of the Artsand renowned drummer Roy Haynes was available to support and have fun one other jazz great. Just over a decade later, Haynes died just days after his friend on Tuesday in Long Island, New York, after a transient illness, his daughter, Leslie Haynes-Gilmore, confirmed to The Times and Washington Post..

Haynes, a first-generation Barbadian American born in Boston in 1925, reportedly began playing drums in local nightclubs as an adolescent. After moving to New York in 1945, Haynes’s style “was characterized by clarity and finesse,” becoming known by the nickname “Snap Crackle,” in accordance with Percussion Arts Society (PAS).

As he noticed USA todayHaynes’ distinctive style made him a sought-after drummer by such talents as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Max Roach, Charles Mingus and Lester Young, amongst others. Despite his common associations with the bebop sound, Haynes eschewed categorization, linking his work to other musical styles and told PAS in a 1998 interview: “I don’t always feel comfortable with these labels that people use. I’m just an old drummer who tries to play by feel.”

In his nearly seventy-year profession, Haynes has won two Grammy Awards; first prize within the category of Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Group in 1989 for the album “Blues for Coltrane – A Tribute to John Coltrane” and in 2000 within the category of Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group for the album “Like Minds”. Like Donaldson, Haynes has had an in depth recording profession, releasing his last album, “Roy-Alty,” in 2011.

In addition to his daughter, Haynes is survived by sons, fellow drummer Craig Holiday Haynes and cornetist Graham Haynes, eight grandchildren, including drummer Marcus Gilmore, and seven great-grandchildren.