On October 6, 2005, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem presented a Harlem Speaks Oral History interview with drum master Roy Haynes in a discussion with fellow drummer Lewis Nash that captivated and thrilled the rapt audience at the offices of the Jazz Museum in Harlem. Much as when on drums, Haynes was at the center of a swirling discussion that swung from his early days growing up in Boston, to coming to New York 60 years ago to play with the Luis Russell at the Savoy Ballroom onto remembrances of the exhilaration of performing with a cross-section of the eternal pantheon of jazz . . . Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Chick Corea, and John Coltrane, to name a few.
He reminisced about hanging with the fraternity of musicians on 127th and St. Nicholas Avenue back in the '50s; he explained why he viewed Sarah and Ella as so musically and vocally talented that they were "one of the guys." Haynes recounted the quickness and acuity of Charlie Parker's mind on the bandstand, and the drummers he admired while carving his own place in the annals of jazz. When he was asked what he thought about today's popular music, he paused . . shook his head . . . looked up, saying "Now some of rap is hip . . . yet some of it is hop!"