Roy Haynes kept time for Charlie Parker in the late 1940s, subbed for Elvin Jones in the John Coltrane Quartet in the 1960s, jammed with the Allman Brothers in the 2000s, and voiced a radio DJ in Grand Theft Auto V. This episode explains how one drummer authored so much of jazz history. Born in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood on March 13, 1925, to parents from Barbados, he grew up alongside a brother, Michael E. Haynes, who became a civil rights leader, state representative and pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church that Martin Luther King Jr. attended. Roy made his professional debut around 1942 and by 1949 was in Parker's quintet, helping invent a bebop drumming language that moved timekeeping to the ride cymbal and used the snare and bass drum to drop bombs.

The hosts unpack the tight snare tuning and rim shots behind his Snap Crackle nickna ...