Home » Jazz Musicians » Roy Ayers

Roy Ayers

Roy Ayers - vibraphone, composer, bandleader, recording artist

Roy Ayers was during the 1960s one of the most prominent and leading jazz vibraphone players in America. During the 1970s and 80s he came to change his focus and became one of the leading figures in R&B and jazz/funk. The 1990s has once again brought him into a new direction and he is now regarded being one of the greatest innovators of the acid jazz movement. His music has often been described as being years ahead of it's time.

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. 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 handed Ayers a pair of mallets, sealing the youngster's musical destiny with that simple gesture. 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.

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 band leader. 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--all produced by Mann: “Daddy Bug,” “Virgo Red,” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.”

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.

Read more

Tags

14
Profile

Roy Ayers: A Retrospective

Read "Roy Ayers: A Retrospective" reviewed by Jason Elias


Vibraphonist, singer and producer Roy Ayers is a master of many musical styles and genres, from acid-jazz, jazz-funk to romantic ballads and dance tracks. While many of his contemporaries seemed to fail when they tried different sounds, Ayers always made sure a certain of musicality and identity was apparent in all of his work. Ayers's first album was 1963's West Coast Vibes and it was issued on United Artists Records. Ayers spent the next few years as a ...

467
Live Review

Roy Ayers at Yoshi's

Read "Roy Ayers at Yoshi's" reviewed by Walter Atkins


Roy Ayers is Everywhere Yoshi's Oakland Oakland California November 27, 2015 The venerable vibraphonist Roy Ayers and his seasoned band performed during a sold out weekend at the East Bay's popular Yoshi's in Oakland's Jack London Square. The exuberant 75-year-old composer /musician opened the exciting second show with “Sweet Tears." Ayers surprised the full house by taking his band into his arrangement of Rick James' funky number one RB hit “Give It To Me Baby" ...

455
Album Review

Roy Ayers: West Coast Vibes

Read "West Coast Vibes" reviewed by Nic Jones


Roy Ayers had a career before he had hit records, and this reissue proves the vibraphonist was both well-versed and eloquent within the realm of post-bop jazz. In the company largely of a cast including pianist Jack Wilson and Curtis Amy on tenor and soprano saxophones, Ayers works his way through the kind of programme of standards and originals that was pretty much the order of the day back in the early 1960s. This does not, however, alter the fact ...

283
Album Review

Roy Ayers: Stoned Soul Picnic

Read "Stoned Soul Picnic" reviewed by Douglas Payne


Stoned Soul Picnic is vibraphonist Roy Ayers' third and probably best solo album, made in 1968 while he was still a part of Herbie Mann's group. Ayers stands clearly in the shadow of Bobby Hutcherson on this primarily modally-oriented date, sounding nothing like the groove-meister he would become known as later in the 1970s.Producer Mann, always an underrated talent scout, assembles an especially exceptional septet for Ayers here with Gary Bartz on alto sax, arranger Charles Tolliver on ...

Read more articles

Video / DVD

Roy Ayers + Maceo Parker

Roy Ayers + Maceo Parker

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Roy Ayers and Maceo Parker are two of my favorite jazz-soul and jazz-funk artists. Both recently released new albums. And both musicians started out as jazz players but invented new R&B forms during their careers—Ayers as a neo-soul vibraphonist and Parker as a bump-and-funk alto saxophonist. Their new albums are moody, funky and chill. Ayers is probably best known for his 1976 album Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Parker emerged in the 1960s as a saxophonist for James Brown and then ...

Video / DVD

Roy Ayers: Jazz-Soul Godfather

Roy Ayers: Jazz-Soul Godfather

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

By the late 1960s and very early '70s, a growing number of young jazz musicians saw the writing on the wall. Rock was attracting massive media attention, ever-larger crowds of young listeners, and larger paydays. To compete, many jazz artists gave up their acoustic instruments for electronic counterparts and began playing a new form of jazz that was heavily influenced by hard rock and psychedelic mysticism. But not all jazz musicians determined to remain relevant rushed to embrace rock. Some ...

1

Festival

2015 Art of Cool Jazz Festival

2015 Art of Cool Jazz Festival

Source: Michael Ricci

By K. Shackelford The 2015 Art of Cool Jazz Festival is a journey into the immense vastness of jazz music with a roster of world class musicians. Operating in only its second year, the three day jazz dreamland, offers a superb mix of old and new artists that illuminate the ways that jazz penetrates many forms of American music. The festival will occur in Durham, North Carolina on April 24-26, 2015. The line-up at AOCFEST is a hefty ...

6

Performance / Tour

Roy Ayers at The Addition

Roy Ayers at The Addition

Source: Michael Ricci

By Walter Atkins The Addition, formally known as Yoshi's San Francisco, welcomed the celebrated and ageless acid jazz/funk vibraphonist Roy Ayers for a weekend stand on November 21, 2014. The new name was inspired by the club's location between Lower Fillmore and the Western Addition. The show kicked off the soft opening of the City's latest music venue. According to his official website, the respected and heavily sampled vibraphonist/vocalist is considered the “The Godfather of Neo Soul." Vocalist ...

78

Performance / Tour

Jammin’ at the Gem Concert Series Showcases Vibraphonist Roy Ayers with Spoken Word and Jazz Poetry Innovators

Jammin’ at the Gem Concert Series Showcases Vibraphonist Roy Ayers with Spoken Word and Jazz Poetry Innovators

Source: Artists Recording Collective, LLC

The second installment in the American Jazz Museum's noted 2011/2012 “Jammin' at the Gem" concert series season headlines another musical master of world renown, the vibraphonist/composer, Roy Ayers. Mr. Ayers will be joined by two pioneers of jazz poetry and spoken word, Jessica Care Moore and Louis Reyes Rivera. Of poets, Moore and Reyes Rivera, AJM Poet-In-Residence, Glenn North states, “Jessica Care Moore was the first poet who appeared on “Showtime at the Apollo" to win 5 times in a ...

54

Event

Jazz Poetry Pioneers at Jammin' at the Gem in February

Jazz Poetry Pioneers at Jammin' at the Gem in February

Source: Artists Recording Collective, LLC

The next concert in the Jammin' at the Gem series features Valentine and Black History Month and a Salute to Jazz Poetry. The Jazz Poetry Jams program at the American Jazz Museum is in its 9th year. The combining of jazz music performance and jazz poetry on the Gem Theater stage in concert is scheduled for Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:00 pm with the legendary Roy Ayers performing with jazz poetry pioneers: Louis Reyes Rivera and Jessica Care Moore. ...

46

Recording

Roy Ayers: Soul Vibes

Roy Ayers: Soul Vibes

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Back in the early 1970s, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams and John McLaughlin leveraged Miles Davis' new electric approach to jazz and created different streams of  jazz-rock fusion. At the same time, vibraphonist Roy Ayers went off in a separate direction—pioneering electronic jazz-funk, which Herbie Hancock would build on with Headhunters in 1973. This Thursday, Nov. 17, Ayers will make a rare performance appearance in Los Angeles at the Exchange LA club, from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Go ...

86

Music Industry

Roy Ayers in Ew! | Roy Ayers | News

Roy Ayers in Ew! | Roy Ayers | News

Source: All About Jazz


128

Performance / Tour

The Godfather of Neo-Soul, Roy Ayers Takes over at the World Famous Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC.

The Godfather of Neo-Soul, Roy Ayers Takes over at the World Famous  Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC.

Source: All About Jazz

On October 29th and 30th, Roy Ayers will be making his debut at New York City’s legendary Blue Note Jazz Club on West 3rd Street in the prominent East Village. At 8:00 PM and 10:30 PM on two consecutive evenings, the renowned icon will appear on stage performing a plethora of his chart topping hits and eternally revived tunes.

As one of the greatest living vibraphonists and vocalists, Roy Ayers is among the best-known, most-loved and respected Jazz and R&B ...

100

Recording

Ubiquity Vibrations | Roy Ayers | Album

Ubiquity Vibrations | Roy Ayers | Album

Source: All About Jazz


Collier & Dean
vibraphone
Tom Collier
vibraphone
Kitty Green
multi-instrumentalist

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Jazz Is Dead 1

Jazz Is Dead
2020

buy

Feeling Good

Verve Records
2013

buy

Fever

Verve Records
2013

buy

Center Of The World

Verve Records
2013

buy

Love Will Bring Us...

Verve Records
2013

buy

Videos

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.