Roy Ayers
Albums
Its misleading title notwithstanding, Change Up the Groove does little to alter the inimitable jazz-funk aesthetic Roy Ayers perfected on earlier LPs like He's Coming and [more]
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He's Coming captures Roy Ayers at the absolute top of his game, masterminding jazz-funk grooves as taut as a tightrope. Profoundly inspired by the Broadway musical {+Jesus Christ [more]
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Roy Ayers' leap to the Polydor label inaugurates his music's evolution away from the more traditional jazz of his earlier Atlantic LPs toward the infectious, funk-inspired fusion [more]
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A Tear to a Smile holds a unique place in Roy Ayers' vast catalog. Released in 1975, it follows a string of albums that began in 1971 with He's Coming where the great [more]
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Despite contributions from an abundance of soul-jazz greats including Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jimmy Owens, and Garnett Brown, Virgo Red is the most stripped-down and nuanced of Roy [more]
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![Live at Ronnie Scott's [DualDisc]](/cache/JHS/g6/130x130_g60491dwe8t.jpg)
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Appearances
As the reality of Y2K took hold, no doubt many artists went with forward-thinking album titles for their first efforts of the new millennium. But guitarist Ronny Jordan wasn't thinking [more]
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Centered around onetime Spinners utility players John Manuel (drums) and Landy Shores (guitar), Saturday Night Special -- presumably named after Norman Connors' Reggie Lucas-written [more]
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Its misleading title notwithstanding, Change Up the Groove does little to alter the inimitable jazz-funk aesthetic Roy Ayers perfected on earlier LPs like He's Coming and [more]
- Member Price: $10.98
He's Coming captures Roy Ayers at the absolute top of his game, masterminding jazz-funk grooves as taut as a tightrope. Profoundly inspired by the Broadway musical {+Jesus Christ [more]
- Member Price: $10.98
Roy Ayers' leap to the Polydor label inaugurates his music's evolution away from the more traditional jazz of his earlier Atlantic LPs toward the infectious, funk-inspired fusion [more]
- Member Price: $10.98
Herbie Mann has always been open to new trends in his music. For this 1969 studio session, he and three other top soloists (vibraphonist Roy Ayers and guitarists Larry Coryell [more]
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A Tear to a Smile holds a unique place in Roy Ayers' vast catalog. Released in 1975, it follows a string of albums that began in 1971 with He's Coming where the great [more]
- Member Price: $10.98
- List Price: $19.98
- Member Price: $17.98
Although the packaging of this compilation album, Groove Jammy is somewhat transparent (with its modern photo melange of 12" turntables on [more]
- Member Price: $9.98
Despite contributions from an abundance of soul-jazz greats including Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jimmy Owens, and Garnett Brown, Virgo Red is the most stripped-down and nuanced of Roy [more]
- Member Price: $10.98
Biography
- Born Sep 10th 1940 in Los Angeles, CA
- Styles
- Soul Jazz
- Instrument(s)
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
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