Musicians who weave their musical magic for us for decades truly are a blessing. One of them, groundbreaking vibraphonist, composer, and producer Roy Ayers, celebrates his 83rd birthday today.
With a career spanning over six decades, Ayers cannot be defined by or limited to any one particular genre of music. Over the years, he has written and played a mix of post-bop jazz, acid jazz, funk, soul, R&B, disco, and hip-hop.
And he’s still going.
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With 170 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Robert R. Jacobson documented Ayers’ beginnings for Musicians Guide.
Ayers was born on September 10, 1940, in Los Angeles, California. Thanks to the influence of his mother, a piano teacher, and his father, a trombone player, Ayers was a musical child. By the time he was five, he was banging out boogie-woogie licks on his mother’s lap at the piano. His introduction to the vibraphone came at the age of six, when his parents took him to a Lionel Hampton concert. After the show, Hampton–one of the all time greats on the instrument–handed Ayers a pair of mallets, perhaps sealing the youngster’s musical destiny with that simple gesture. Meeting Hampton again years later, Ayers regaled him with the story of how he had unknowingly shaped his future.
Before that destiny came to fruition, however, Ayers spent his formative years experimenting with a variety of other instruments. At nine, he taught himself to play the steel guitar. He spent his teens alternating between the flute, trumpet, and drums. He also sang in church choirs, an influence that could still be detected in his vocal style years later. It was not until he was 17 years old that Ayers finally got a chance to play the vibraphone, which he claims had been his favorite instrument all along. Within a year, vibes was his main instrument. After high school, Ayers enrolled at Los Angeles City College, but it was not long before his studies took a back seat to the pursuit of his dream to be a working professional musician.
By the early 1960s, Ayers was playing regularly with a number of local performers, including such fixtures on the Los Angeles jazz scene as Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, and Jack Wilson. This experience soon gave Ayers the necessary confidence to become a bandleader. His first opportunity to record in that capacity came in 1963, on a project called West Coast Vibes, released by United Artists. In 1966 Ayers, at the invitation of bassist Reggie Workman, sat in on a gig with Herbie Mann and his Quintet, at the Lighthouse, a prominent Los Angeles jazz club. Mann was so impressed with his work that he immediately made Ayers a permanent member of the group. Ayers toured and recorded with Mann for the next four years, a period that included the release of Mann’s smash hit LP, Memphis Underground. During this stint, Ayers also recorded three solo albums, which were all produced by Mann: Daddy Bug, Virgo Vibes, and Stoned Soul Picnic.
Enjoy these (progressively larger) tastes of each of those three solo albums.
1963’s “Daddy Bug”:
1967’s “Virgo Vibes”:
1968’s ”Stoned Soul Picnic”:
All About Jazz continues Ayers’ story:
Ayers left the Mann group in 1970, and moved to New York, where he quickly formed his own band, which he dubbed Ubiquity. Ubiquity did not have a stable lineup like a conventional band. It consisted instead of a constantly- shifting roster of musicians at various stages in their careers. The band included established pros like bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist Sonny Fortune; newcomer vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater; and others. Ayers used Ubiquity to create a new genre that borrowed elements from jazz, funk, rock, soul, salsa, and whatever else he heard and liked, and then synthesized them into an appealing melange.
Here’s the complete 37-minute Ubiquity release:
Hard To Find Vinyls helpfully provides the track list in the video’s YouTube notes.
A1 – 0:00 – Pretty Brown Skin (Written-By – Michelle Birdsong, Roy Ayers)
A2 – 5:44 – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head (Written-By – Burt Bacharach, Hal David)
A3 – 10:37 – I Can’t Help Myself (Written-By – Roy Ayers)
A4 – 13:46 – Love (Written-By – Edwin Birdsong, Michelle Birdsong)
B1 – 18:11 – The Fuzz (Written-By – Roy Ayers)
B2 – 22:23 – Hummin’ (Written-By – Gene McDaniels, Nat Adderly ; Arranged By [Special Arrangement] – Edwin Birdsong, Roy Ayers)
B3 – 26:13 – Can You Dig It? (Written-By – Edwin Birdsong, Michelle Birdsong)
B4 – 32:09 – Painted Desert (Written-By – Josef Zawinul)
Enjoy his voice of course, but be sure to savor Ayers’ mellow solo vibes towards the end of 1978’s “Everytime I See You.”
Back to Ayers’ All About Jazz bio:
The next dozen years represented an incredibly prolific period for Ayers and the various versions of Ubiquity. During that span, the group recorded no less than 20 albums for Polydor. Ayers spent the first half of the seventies building an audience for his new musical mixture. His approach was to incorporate anything that he thought sounded good. “I have a totally open mind about music,” he was quoted as saying in the liner notes to the 1995 compilation Evolution: The Polydor Anthology. “I love the music I listen to– pop, jazz, blues and soul–and I’m not closed to them. My music is a combination of styles fused into one. I like to cover the total perspective,” he continued. He also experimented quite a bit with his own instrument, becoming one of the first vibes players to alter the instrument’s sound with fuzz boxes, wah-wah pedals, and other effects more commonly associated with the electric guitar. At times, the vibes were a featured solo instrument, with Ayers taking off on extended flights of mallet fancy. Just as often, however, his vibes lurked in the background, shimmering behind riffing keyboards, guitars, and horns, all driven by a thumping rhythm section.
Check out the funk of “Pretty Brown Skin,” found on 1995’s “Evolution.”
Over the years, Ayers frequently worked with jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater. For those of you who remember all the classic Blaxploitation films of the ‘70s, Ayers wrote the soundtrack for “Coffy,” which features Bridgewater.
From the Jive Time Records blog’s 2021 review of the soundtrack:
Blaxploitation flicks flourished briefly and brightly in the ’70s, but most have been forgotten, except by fanatical film scholars and heady hip-hop producers. But the soundtracks that accompanied them have had a much longer shelf life in the public’s consciousness. Thankfully, the guardians of these gritty and flamboyant urban cinemascapes have kept awareness and availability alive all these decades later, and heads are consequently richer for having easy access to classics of the genre such as Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly, Isaac Hayes’ Shaft, James Brown’s Black Caesar, Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man, and Earth, Wind & Fire’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song. Along with these monuments to long-sideburned coolness, Roy Ayers’ Coffy belongs snugly in the top 10.
“Coffy Is The Color” kicks things off in a manner as peppy and funky as Curtis Mayfield or Stevie Wonder on happy pills, powered by chikka-wakka guitar from Billy Nichols (or is it Bob Rose?), William King’s percolating congas, Ayers’ lithe vibes, and Richard Davis’ tensile yet rubbery bass. Ayers sings, and he ain’t bad for a vibraphonist, though he’s no Curtis or Stevie. “Pricilla’s Theme” starts as a mellow gold instrumental, a breezy, cushiony reverie that’s silk-sheet luxury… until Ayers goes elegantly manic on vibes and the bass/drums/percussion groove gets (gy)rated XXX. Talk about a split personality!
Have a listen!
One more visit to that All About Jazz bio:
The emergence of disco in the second half of the 1970s brought Ayers and Ubiquity into the limelight. The hit song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” from the 1976 album of the same title, became a dance floor sensation, and although it was never released as a single it probably remains the tune most associated with Ayers. In 1977, the song “Running Away” broke into the R&B top twenty, and is generally regarded as a dance club classic. The following year, Ubiquity recorded “The Freaky Deaky,” which became popular enough to inspire a dance step of the same name. These and other Ubiquity hits of the genre Ayers referred to as “disco jazz” became dance floor anthems, and have remained popular over the two decades that followed.
This remastered video, of Ayers performing “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” on “Soul Train” in 197, is a classic.
Ayers broke new ground in 1979, when he and Fela Kuti first met, incorporating Pan-Africanism in their 1981collaboration, “Music of Many Colours.”
In 2020, John Morrison of the UK’s The Wire wrote about the collaboration.
As Roy Ayers explains to The Wire, 1979 found him and his band embarking upon a journey across the Atlantic to Nigeria to tour the country with Fela and Africa 70. Before the two met, Ayers was already a fan. “I actually heard Fela’s music for the first time playing in a nightclub that I was in, I cannot recall the name of the club now. In a nutshell I was going to Nigeria to perform with the understanding that I would be touring along with Fela.”
When Ayers and his entourage touched down in Nigeria, the band embarked on a three week, five city tour throughout the country. Taking up residence in Phonodisk Studios, located in the town of Ijebu Igbo, Ayers and Fela recorded Music Of Many Colours, an album made up of two side-length compositions that went on to serve as anthems for the movement of global Black liberation. The album opens with “Africa – Center Of The World”, a groovy, midtempo jam that opens with Tunde Brown’s taut rhythm guitar and Fela playing a simple keyboard melody. Africa 70’s six piece brass section introduces the tune’s regal chorus, before the entire band settle in, allowing Ayers to solo. His playing here is strong, flowery and controlled all at once. Nearly nine minutes into the song’s expansive hypnotic groove, Fela’s voice enters the proceedings, backed by a chorus of Alake, Tokunbo, Ihiase, Fehintola and Folake Anikulapo-Kuti. Taking aim at white supremacy itself, Fela openly mocks western civilisation, deeming it as being built on “wrong information”, “wrong education” and “ignorance”, challenging any assumptions about the superiority of Europeans and re-centering (no pun intended) not only the geographic position of the continent, but the intellectual and cultural genius of its people. From here in Fela’s words shift focus from admonishing the west toward embracing the diaspora. “All I need to say is set your minds to Africa. Africa, the centre of the world! Check your world map and see!”.
The cut reaches a thrilling climax when Fela and chorus call out to the diaspora directly, “Black people all over the world, set your minds to Africa! African Americans, set your minds to Africa! African West Indians…Africans in Europe, set your minds to Africa! We need Pan-Africanism!”. Ayers tells me, ““Africa – Center of The World” means just that, it is in fact at the centre of the world and I felt the need at that time to vocalise that seeing as I was also there in Africa at the time.”
RELATED STORY: Caribbean Matters: Get to know the red, black, and green Pan-African flag
Have a listen to “Africa, Center of the World” below.
Let’s fast forward to 2005. Patrick Savey’s “La Légende du Groove” documentary series devoted an episode to Ayers.
Soul, funk, and jazz legend Roy Ayers shows us around his beautiful Harlem apartment once shared with James Baldwin in this special Black History Month edition of “The Questions”.
Give it a watch!
In March 2018, at age 77, Ayers played an NPR “Tiny Desk Concert.”
From NPR Music’s YouTube notes:
Roy Ayers arrived at his Tiny Desk performance beaming with positivity. The 77-year-old funk icon and vibraphonist sauntered through the office with a Cheshire grin on his face, sharing jokes with anyone within earshot. Accompanying him was a trio of brilliantly seasoned musicians — keyboardist Mark Adams, bassist Trevor Allen and drummer Christopher De Carmine. Later during the performance, pride washed across Ayers’ face as his bandmates took the spotlight. (Be sure to watch as Adams woos not just the room but brightens Ayers’ face during his solo.)
But as I hinted at the start: He’s still playing!
Here’s a clip from a live performance in London last summer:
Phew! We just covered six decades of the life and music of Ayers with our music time machine today, and you know I’ll have more in the comments below. Let’s all join in with some good birthday wishes for him!
