Cyril Haynes

This pianist was off and running, as in up and down the keyboard, when others his age were still busy running around playing. He started playing music before he was 10, and as a teenager, Cyril Haynes was active with several other prodigious young talents from his neighborhood including the great trumpeter Charlie Shavers. Haynes' older brother, Ronald Haynes, had served as an inspiration, with formal training from Columbia University certainly providing him with a suitable background for the assignments he took on during his long career. Haynes recorded regularly from the '30s through the '60s but after this, mostly played live, including a regular series of solo piano shows at New York City venues during the late '70s. In the early years he seemed to show a penchant for joining groups with somewhat florid names including Dixie on Parade, Billy Hick's Sizzling Six, and the Savoy Sultans, the latter group led by Al Cooper. He was often the house pianist at various clubs, and in 1944 put together a recording group with the great clarinetist Barney Bigard. Haynes was the accompanist for singer Lena Horne in 1947, then headed for the west coast where he spent some three years gigging as a soloist in piano bars. A collaboration with Noble Sissle was unveiled in 1950, prompting a move back to New York City where he unsurprisingly found more solo piano jobs. He kept busy in this decade while other players from this genre ran and hid from the onset of rock & roll, working with Cab Calloway, Reuben Phillips, and Andy Kirk. His partnership with Calloway continued for decades, the pianist taking part in a combined tour with the Harlem Globetrotters that packed them in at the box office. He is not related to the Cyril Haynes who worked as an assistant to Diana Ross in the '90s -- while it seems the pianist was still alive then, exposure to this diva's demands would surely have been a fatal stress for any senior citizen. ~ Eugene Chadbourne