Jazz breaking news: Roy Haynes taps into the Fountain of Youth at Ronnie Scott’s

Monday, May 20, 2013

As the interval before the second set grows alarmingly long and concerned-looking staff vanish backstage, we start to fear the worst.

It’s one of the wonders of the world, after all, that Roy Haynes (pictured left), the drummer who’s played with everyone – from Parker and Coltrane to Metheny, from a 1946 Southern tour with Louis Armstrong to Billie Holiday’s last club gig – is, aged 88, still on stage at all. And though his aptly named Fountain of Youth band all took long solos in that first set, when Haynes cut loose himself, it was ferocious, with nothing held back. Was that, finally, it? Is Haynes, though he must be supernaturally fit, lying exhausted backstage, incapable of anything more?

When he does emerge, the jury remains out as he chats at length, seemingly reluctant to drum. Alternately rambling and sharp, he’s on his own wavelength, much like Elvis’s 1970s gig soliloquies. “What did he mean?” he imagines us pondering. “What makes him special? Is his drumming really that good? The place was crowded…”

Finally, normal service is resumed, for a couple of songs. Then Haynes begins a solo, and sometime in the maybe 30 minutes that follow, his band realise they’ve become redundant. Haynes pulls every possibility from every inch of his kit: tapping and finely calibrating the hi-hat’s timbre and volume, while stilling its reverberation with his fingers; finding brittle tones on the kit’s edge, and placing an elbow on a drum to gently shift its sound. He appears to listen attentively as each element is tested, a showman letting us know he’s a scientist of the drum. Steady grooves regularly lead into thundering flurries so fierce his bass-pedal snaps. Faced with this handicap, he murmurs equably, “I’ll think up something else to play.” When someone breaks the spell with a gargling cough, he jokes, “I needed a rest anyway.” Twice he steps away for applause, then continues, and only in these final stretches does the solo’s resource start to flag. With no kit left unexplored, he plays himself, rapping on his leg, then tap-dancing.

I saw Art Blakey in his last year play similar tricks with his kit, and Antonio Sanchez is among the fine, younger drummers we’re blessed with today. But this was the greatest drumming I’ve seen. Was he any better at 28, or 68? A friend suggests that, for durability of genius, Haynes is giving Picasso competition.

And even then, that’s not it, as he leads a long sing-along on Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’. ‘You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em,’ it goes, ‘know when to fold ‘em…’ Not ready to fold, Haynes asks the band if there’s a third set. On nights like this, he isn’t drinking from the fountain of youth so much as handing out generous doses from it. Maybe we do need it more than Roy Haynes. He's still the best drummer in the room.

– Nick Hasted

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