ROY HAYNES, at age 82, plays with awesome power and musicality, in Manhattan on June 5, 2007 (Photo - E. Rudolph)

Posted 11/12/07; Originally Published in Mix, Spring 1999

by Eric Rudolph

Roy Haynes is a something of an under-appreciated gem amid the treasure trove of America's great jazz veterans. The 73 year-old drummer is not particularly well known as a leader, but that was hard to believe in Manhattan last August when Haynes had the spacious Birdland club packed to the walls.

The diminutive, shaven-headed Haynes, who began his musical career in 1944, proceeded to play with the verve of a man one-third his age, driving his musicians (including the great young saxophonist David Sanchez) to uplifting and blazing heights.

Along with his astonishing jazz chops, Haynes plays and leads with a punch, showmanship and power that brings to mind the primal, youthful exultation of great rock drummers. All of this combines to make a Haynes performance a joyous, life-affirming, but still undeniably musical occasion.

Haynes' commanding talent and presence makes perfect sense when one considers that he participated directly in the best of the latter half of 100 years of jazz. The man has, after all, backed Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, Stan Getz and Gary Burton, and did extensive work with Charlie Parker (1949-52), John Coltrane (as the regular substitute for Elvin Jones, 1961-65), Sarah Vaughan (1953-58) and Chick Corea.

Guitarist Pat Metheny sums up Roy Haynes well in the liner notes to Praise, Haynes' most recent recording: "He has a depth and a listening sensitivity that allows him to not only play beautifully every time but to make the musicians the beneficiaries of his musical wisdom, always inspiring them to new heights. The many nights I've played with Roy remain among the highlights of my life as a musician."

Though he's dabbled in jazz-rock, most notably with his Seventies group the Hip Ensemble, Haynes remains a jazz purist. When told that his playing appears to have the youthful spirit of the best of rock drumming Haynes replies with a hearty laugh saying "I'm sorry to hear that!" However, he's heard it before.

"When we play places where there's a younger crowd, the first thing some of the ladies comment on is the 'energy' that I play with. But it's how you do the energy; it's not just pounding your instrument. There may be a lot of power in my playing but it is still all about trying to draw a musical sound out of the drums."

In light of his astonishing vigor, no conversation with Haynes would be complete without an inquiry into the source of his youthfulness. However, Haynes disappoints; he is just as bewildered as the rest of us, saying, "I don't know; there is no secret!"

However, he admits that even he is not in an up mood all the time, sometimes even as the walk to the stage looms. "A lot of times I'll go to a show and I don't feel like getting up onstage. But when I do get on I want to kick ass, man!"  

Praise, which does so, was recorded in three days last May at Brooklyn's Systems Two studios with Haynes producing; the engineer was New York jazz specialist A. T. Michael MacDonald. The swingin' date included sax stars Sanchez (tenor) and Kenny Garrett (alto and tenor), Roy's son Graham Haynes on flugelhorn and cornet, Haynes longtime pianist David Kikoski, bassist Dwayne Burno and percussionist Daniel Moreno.

However, if Haynes had his own way the record would've cut during a live club date. 

"I'm not that comfortable in the studio," Haynes explains from his Long Island home. "Headphones and isolation booths are not conducive to the feeling I'm after. I want eye contact; I give a lot of cues." However, the record company wanted a studio session, so to approximate the cherished live feeling Praise was cut with almost no overdubs and the only musician who worked in an isolation booth was bassist Burno.

MacDonald never even considered putting Haynes in a separate room. "Roy Haynes in a drum booth would've been a disaster; he would've blown out the room. All I did was place some gobos around him to keep the horns out of his mics, rather than try to keep him out of the other mics; the bleed of a great drummer like Roy Haynes is a part of the sound of a good jazz date."

Haynes was set up in a corner of Systems Two's 50 x 40 foot main room, which has a 26-foot ceiling. The rest of the musicians were close by in a semi-circle. "It's as close to a live date as we could get, very straight ahead," Haynes explains.

A chief concern was getting Haynes' signature "snap crackle and pop" drum sound right. "I like a bright sound; everything now is geared toward more of a funk drum sound," the drummer complains. 

Getting Roy Haynes' drum sound right really isn't much of a challenge explains engineer MacDonald. "He could make any drum set sound amazing because he has such a wide dynamic range, and is such an explosive, physical player." However, Haynes didn't take the easy choice of playing a studio drum kit. "Roy brought in his own his drum set which his son Craig tuned perfectly, in about 20 minutes."

Systems Two's big, high-ceilinged room was a significant factor in the recording of Praise. "The studio is a converted movie theater, and its got just the right mix of diffusion and absorption, unlike some of the big Manhattan rooms where the sound just dies! You can take off the headphones and hear everything in Systems Two. In fact when we cut Charlie Parker's My Little Suede Shoes for (the original of which Haynes recorded with Bird nearly fifty years ago) as a duet with only Haynes and Kenny Garrett, we didn't use headphones, just the room's acoustics," MacDonald notes.

Haynes drum set was miked primarily with overheads. "I always start with the overhead mics and then close-mic all the drums, but tuck the close mic sounds into the overhead mix," MacDonald says. "If you were to solo my kick or snare track they might sound unimpressive. But when you hear it all in concert with the overhead mics it suddenly makes sense."

Haynes drums were miked as follows:  overheads Schoeps CMC 5's; kick Electro Voice RE-20; snare the standard SM-57; high hat AKG 414 and toms Neumann U-87s. 

MacDonald explains that these somewhat unconventional mic choices had a lot to do with his preference to avoid using equalization. "I feel EQ creates as many problems as it solves. I prefer to adjust the frequency curves with different mics and their placement. When you add high-end EQ you get a slight delay from the capacitors storing energy. It's very subtle but cumulative; when you EQ in tracking, mixing and mastering it builds up and you get a time smear. Plus with something as harmonically complex as a piano, you can easily destroy that delicate harmonic balance with the twist of a knob. When I use EQ it is only as a last resort and usually it will be cuts rather than boosts."

The only EQ used for the entire date was a little notching out of the drums. "You get a pile-up with multiple mics in the midrange, so I sucked out a couple of dBs at the 200-400 Hz range," MacDonald explains.

MacDonald is serious about his microphone-based approach to frequency manipulation. "The Schoeps overhead mics are part of my signature sound with drums; with them I don't have to use EQ on the cymbals because in addition to the top end of the mic being just right, they give you a darker harmonic. As hyper-cardioids those mics have a little more reach and a bit of proximity boost to get the mid and low frequencies. It’s easy to get the top end, but cymbals have a wide range of frequencies, and with the Schoeps I get it all." 

As for the odd choice of the old EV RE-20 for the kick, MacDonald says, "It's got a good, solid definable bottom and handles transients and is impossible to overload. This was especially important for Roy Haynes because he'll occasionally punch the bass drum so hard it's like an explosion! If I'd put a condenser mic in there he'd probably have blown it out. And I don't like the new bass drum mics; most seem to have too much top end."

MacDonald constructed a tent out of a moving blanket taped to the bass drum's lugs and supported by a folding chair. "This arrangement keeps the cymbals out of the bass drum mic. It lets me, maybe, add a splash of 3 kHz to the bass drum without getting the cymbals. I never dampen the kick; in jazz the bass drum is supposed to hit you lower in the gut, not in the solar plexus, and have sustain."

The unusual choice of the Neumann U-87 (commonly used for vocals or horns) for the toms came because the microphone "can handle a lot of sound pressure and because I can play with the variable pattern settings and adjust the proximity effect. People forget that you can use an omnidirectional mic on drums and not worry about leakage because drums are so much louder than anything leaking in. The omni setting can change the sound of the toms to be less dark. If you want it darker you switch a U-87 to figure 8 and get more reach and more proximity effect."

The choice of the SM-57 for the snare, one of the workhorse mic's classic uses, was easy. "It's got that great presence peak and roll-off on the top, plus it 's tough to overload."

The AKG 414 was chosen for the high hat because "high hat is super-critical in jazz; so often it is laying down the basic groove. I adjust the mic's pickup patterns, again, for more or less proximity and I usually use the 150 Hz roll off, always preferring to use the mic's electronics rather than EQ. I angle the 414 slightly so that I'll get the less of the snare and bass drum."

Producer Haynes bowed to MacDonald regarding the mic placement and choice. However, when it came to balance the drummer was more involved. "Roy wants things very aggressive, the drums are very forward the cymbals are brought back down into the drums. Getting that balance right is more important than the mic choice. We could've put all SM-57s on Roy's drums and if we balanced it right it would've sounded amazing."

The rest of the players were tracked using mostly vintage mics. RCA 44s were used on Graham Haynes' flugelhorn and coronet because "they don't give you anything effective above 8-9 kHz. That is perfect for a flugelhorn or cornet because I don't want to hear 15 kHz; it's just spit and noise. When we hear a horn live we're not 15 inches but 15-20 feet away and that stuff gets lost. So the RCA 44s give you a natural presentation."

Saxmen Sanchez and Garrett used Neumann U-47s. "They have the perfect coloration for saxophones. You simply put them in the right place and hope the player will reasonably stay in that sweet spot."

Systems Two's piano is a highly-pedigreed concert grand, Steinway number 385, which was the house piano at Carnegie Hall for many years. However, in MacDonald's estimation some of the upper registers are a tad brittle. "The Sony 37s have kind of a chunky sound and they smoothed out the brittle registers. For another piano I would've used different mics."

Praise, like most jazz dates these days, was cut on a tight schedule, which was just fine. "Two takes was the norm, with the maximum being three," MacDonald notes. "The caliber of the musicianship was so high that we didn't need more takes. I think that was also part of Roy's approach as producer. He didn't want people to think too much or go through take after take."

The last track, Haynes' drum solo Shades of Senegal, was cut in one pass. "Roy kept saying that he was thinking about a drum solo piece, but that he wasn't sure exactly what he would do. But he did it once and that was it, and it was absolutely brilliant. I have to think that the old master knew what he had in mind all along," says MacDonald admiringly. 

The Praise sessions were tracked to a Mitsubishi X-800 32-track Pro Digital recorder, because it "was in the room and plugged in and it sounded great." The console was an Otari Concept 1 analog automated board that MacDonald says was "transparent with a lot of punch." The analog-to-digital converter was a Prism AD 124.

The recording was mixed in two days to a Sony PCM-9000 magneto optical drive at Systems Two and mastered using Sonic Solutions at Mac Donald's AlgoRhythms mastering room in Manhattan.

Monitors for tracking and mixing were Genelec 1031-As. MacDonald used no compression and one reverb unit "very slightly on everything, an old Klark Teknik DN-780, an Eighties-era machine that people love so much you never see them on the used market."

Praise was a dream job for MacDonald. "I've worked with a lot of famous jazz musicians but I can't recall working with anyone with so much life, energy and animation, yet so much focus. I think everyone on the date was inspired to play a little bit better than they normally might. Meanwhile the whole thing was on Roy's shoulders and he's just going along telling jokes and goofing around. That is until they sat down to play, then it was all business. I told Roy I felt privileged to be a part of this record; I would've done it for nothing," MacDonald concludes proudly.

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