Roy Ayers
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Roy Ayers Biography
Once one of the most visible and winning jazz vibraphonists of
the 1960s, then an R&B bandleader in the 1970s and '80s, Roy Ayers'
reputation s now that of one of the prophets of acid jazz, a man
decades ahead of his time. A tune like 1972's Move to Groove by the
Roy Ayers Ubiquity has a crackling backbeat that serves as the
prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became, shall we say,
ubiquitous on acid jazz records; and his relaxed 1976 song Everybody
Loves the Sunshine has been frequently sampled. Yet Ayers' own playing
has always been rooted in hard bop: crisp, lyrical, rhythmically
resilient. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd as
the Icon Man is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough
business. I'm having fun laughing with it, he has said. I don't mind
what they call me, that's what people do in this industry.
Growing up in a musical family -- his father played trombone, his
mother taught him the piano -- the five-year-old Ayers was given a set
of vibe mallets by Lionel Hampton, but didn't start on the instrument
until he was 17. He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his
early 20s, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963-1967),
and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965-1966); and playing with Teddy
Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes and Phineas Newborn. A session
with Herbie Mann at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach led to a four-year
gig with the versatile flutist (1966-1970), an experience that gave
Ayers tremendous exposure and opened his ears to styles of music other
than the bebop that he had grown up with.
After being featured prominently on Mann's hit Memphis Underground
album and recording three solo albums for Atlantic under Mann's
supervision, Ayers left the group in 1970 to form the Roy Ayers
Ubiquity, which recorded several albums for Polydor and featured such
players as Sonny Fortune, Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim, and Alphonse
Mouzon. An R&B-jazz-rock band influenced by electric Miles Davis
and the Herbie Hancock Sextet at first, the Ubiquity gradually shed its
jazz component in favor of R&B/funk and disco. Though Ayers' pop
records were commercially successful, with several charted singles on
the R&B charts for Polydor and Columbia, they became increasingly,
perhaps correspondingly, devoid of musical interest.
In the 1980s, besides leading his bands and recording, Ayers
collaborated with Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, formed Uno
Melodic Records, and produced and/or co-wrote several recordings for
various artists. As the merger of hip-hop and jazz took hold in the
early '90s, Ayers made a guest appearance on Guru's seminal Jazzmatazz
album in 1993 and played at New York clubs with Guru and Donald Byrd.
Though most of his solo records had been out of print for years, Verve
issued a two-CD anthology of his work with Ubiquity and the first U.S.
release of a live gig at the 1972 Montreux Jazz Festival; the latter
finds the group playing excellent straight-ahead jazz, as well as
jazz-rock and R&B. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide
Written by Richard S. Ginell