High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Roy Owen Haynes (born March 13, 1925 in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts) is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Haynes is one of the most recorded drummers in jazz and in his over 60-year career has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He has a highly expressive, personal style and is known to foster a deep engagement in his bandmates.One of the few jazz musicians alive today whose roots touch the origins of jazz itself, the drum legend has been hard swinging since 1944, when he made his professional debut at the age of seventeen in his native Boston. In the last sixty years, Roy Owen Haynes has shaped some of the most important recordings in Jazz history, transforming the role of the percussionist from timekeeper to front-line collaborator.