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The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Everybody Loves the Sunshine is just one point of perfection in Roy Ayers' truly ubiquitous legacy
There's a sense in which Roy Ayers was blessed from the start. Aged five, the son of two musicians – and by all accounts already showing talent as a pianist – he was famously presented with his first set of vibraphone mallets backstage at a gig by Lionel Hampton. If you wanted to take a romantic view, you could look on that as an act of benediction: the man who had more or less singlehandedly popularised an instrument that had previously been viewed as a novelty passing on the mantle along with his mallets. Hampton had broken racial barriers in the process: at a time when jazz bands were almost entirely segregated, Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson's work with Benny Goodman's quartet was subtly acclaimed by one critic as 'the most beautiful example of men working together to be seen in public today'. For a time, it looked as if Ayers was following in Hampton's footsteps. By the time of his debut album, 1963's West Coast Vibes, Ayers was clearly carving out a space for himself in the jazz world. Running through versions of Charlie Parker's Donna Lee or Thelonious Monk's Well You Needn't, he was already his own man: a little hotter in his approach to the vibraphone than Milt Jackson, less inclined towards the avant than his friend Bobby Hutcherson. But, as it turned out, playing post-bop standards wasn't Ayers' destiny. You could already sense him looking beyond jazz by the late 60s. He started confidently essaying contemporary pop, and seemed to have a particular thing for Laura Nyro's album Eli and the 13th Confession: her Stoned Soul Picnic provided the title track of his 1968 album; Emmie turned up on 1969's Daddy Bug, in among bossa nova tunes, and a surprisingly funereal, noir-ish take on Bacharach and David's This Guy's in Love With You. Ayers was just getting started: you could divine a lot from him naming first his 1970 album Ubiquity, then his new band. On their 1972 debut He's Coming, their music appeared to go everywhere: constantly switching from jazz to soft soul to hard funk to Gil Scott-Heron-ish proto rap, displaying both extraordinarily catholic taste in covers – the Hollies' He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, I Don't Know How to Love Him from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar – and Ayers' increasing talent as a songwriter, most notably on the superb, dramatically orchestrated We Live in Brooklyn, Baby. It was jazz-funk before anyone came up with the phrase – although infinitely tougher and less smooth than the music said phrase later came to encapsulate. What the kind of jazz purist who felt Miles Davis's Bitches Brew represented a craven capitulation to commerciality made of it can well be imagined, but that really didn't matter. For the rest of the 70s, Ayers produced one fantastic album after another – Red, Black and Green, Vibrations, his incredible soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film Coffy – gradually honing and homogenising his style until it reached a point of perfection on 1976's Everybody Loves the Sunshine. If the utterly blissful title track understandably became Ayers' theme song, it's ultimately just one moment among many: Hey Uh-What You Say Come On, The Third Eye, Keep on Walking. Its sound was effectively reprised on Come Into Knowledge, the solitary album by RAMP, a sophisticated Cincinnati funk band whose name – an acronym for Roy Ayers Music Productions – told you everything about Ayers' level of involvement: ignored on release in 1977, its blend of silky, wide-eyed soul and hard-edged funk took on a new lease of life after A Tribe Called Quest sampled one track, Daylight, on their 1990 hit Bonita Applebum, adding their names to a faintly mind-boggling list of artists and producers who have plundered Ayers' back catalogue for beats: Dr Dre, Mary J Blige, J Cole, Tyler, the Creator, J Dilla, Kendrick Lamar, Public Enemy, Erykah Badu, Madlib and Tupac among them. Ayers' samples are the link between Deee-Lite's Groove Is in the Heart and NWA's Fuck tha Police; they're also probably the only thing that MF Doom had in common with the Backstreet Boys. Ayers was a great bandleader in time-honoured jazz style, capable of attracting incredible musicians (David Bowie pinched both drummer Dennis Davis and guitarist Carlos Alomar from Ayers; after Davis's departure, Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie took over on drums), and spotting talent in its nascent state. He alighted on songwriter Edwin Birdsong when he was a recently demobbed soldier struggling to make his way in New York's jazz scene; he gave vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater a starring role on the Coffy soundtrack at the start of her career. He was also able to move nimbly with changing times: the sound of disco lurked in the background of Everybody Loves the Sunshine, but on the following year's Lifeline, he and Birdsong plunged wholeheartedly into the genre, producing one of its indelible classics, the sparkling Running Away. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion His embrace of disco offered Ayers' detractors further ammunition: so did the glossy sound, although, frankly, it's a pretty miserable individual who can't grasp the glory of Fever's ice-cool but supremely funky opening track Love Will Bring Us Back Together. But if said detractors thought the direction he was heading in was now obvious, they were in for a shock. Hot on the heels of 1980's slick Love Fantasy came Music of Many Colours, a collaboration with Fela Kuti consisting of two raw and implausibly thrilling side-long tracks recorded at the end of a joint tour in Africa that perfectly melded Kuti's Afrobeat and Ayers' jazz-funk. Its influence continued to course through Ayers' subsequent albums Africa: Center of the World and 1983's Lots of Love. He was concurrently producing slinky post-disco for Eighties Ladies and their singer Sylvia Striplin – the latter's debut solo album Give Me Your Love is a particular delight that, like the RAMP album before it, belatedly became a rare-groove classic. He might have stopped using the Ubiquity name, but his sound was still everywhere. Ayers kept releasing new albums, but never quite regained the commercial form he had found at Ubiquity's peak, and his output began to slow as the 80s drew to a close. But by then, it scarcely seemed to matter: the attentions of crate-digging producers and DJs alike meant that Ayers' name was rightly revered by a new generation of artists. His influence hung very heavy indeed over both acid jazz and neo-soul – he worked with Badu and Alicia Keys – and, whatever twists and turns hip-hop took, Ayers' music always seemed to have a role within it: he turned up alongside Branford Marsalis and Donald Byrd on Guru's acclaimed solo album Jazzmatazz in 1993, then again 22 years later, in an entirely different rap era, on Tyler, the Creator's Cherry Bomb, dubbing the latter 'a lovely young man'. He toured relentlessly, claiming he wanted to be on stage 'until I die', a feat he very nearly achieved. 'Everybody is important,' he reasoned, 'so it is important I reach as many people as possible with my voice.' That seems the perfect explanation not just for his constant gigging, but Roy Ayers' whole, boundary-free musical approach.
The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Roy Ayers obituary
When Ruby Ayers, a piano teacher, took her five-year-old son Roy to a concert by the Lionel Hampton Big Band in California in 1945, the boy showed so much enthusiasm for the performance that Hampton presented him with his pair of vibe mallets. Roy Ayers, who has died aged 84, would go on to blaze a trail as a vibraphonist, composer, singer and producer. A genre-bending pioneer of hard bop, funk, neo-soul and acid jazz, Ayers was most famous for his feel-good track Everybody Loves the Sunshine, from the 1976 album of the same name. He told the Guardian that the song was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York on, naturally, a warm summer's day. Among those who feature are Debbie Darby (credited as 'Chicas') on vocals and Philip Woo on piano, electric piano and synthesiser. Woo explained that Ayers did not like to work from charts or scores, with the song based around a single chord that the band in the studio then developed. While it was never released as a single, Everybody Loves the Sunshine's warm, jazz-soul sound has won it numerous admirers over the past 50 years. As well as being sampled hundreds of times, by artists including Dr Dre and Mary J Blige, the track has also been covered by musicians ranging from D'Angelo to Jamie Cullen. Perhaps the sheer simplicity of the song's structure explains its appeal to such a variety of musicians. The hazy chords set up a steady state condition that allows the performer room for manoeuvre. D'Angelo covered the song in sweaty desire; Cullen's Live in Ibiza version is as light and moreish as your favourite ice-cream; the Robert Glasper Experiment cover is edgy, an exercise in deconstruction. Other notable versions include the electronica-infused track from the DJ Cam Quartet and the modern jazz take of trumpeter Takuya Kuroda. Ayers was born in the South Park (later South Central) district of Los Angeles, and grew up on Vermont Avenue amid the widely admired Central Avenue jazz scene during the 1940s and 50s, which attracted luminaries such as Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus. His father, Roy Ayers Sr, worked as a parking attendant and played the trombone. His mother, Ruby, was a piano player and teacher. He attended Thomas Jefferson high school, sang in the church choir, and played steel guitar and piano in a local band called the Latin Lyrics. He studied music theory at Los Angeles City College, but left before completing his studies to tour as a vibraphone – or vibes – sideman. His first album, West Coast Vibes (1963), was produced by the British jazz musician and journalist Leonard Feather. He then teamed up with the flautist Herbie Mann, who produced the 'groove' based sound of Virgo Vibes (1967) and Stoned Soul Picnic (1968). Relocating to New York at the start of the 1970s, Ayers formed the jazz-funk ensemble Roy Ayers Ubiquity, recruiting a roster of around 14 musicians. At this time he composed and performed the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Coffy (1973), starring Pam Grier as a vigilante nurse. The Everybody Loves the Sunshine album was released under the Ubiquity rubric, reaching No 51 on the US Billboard charts, but making no impact on the UK charts. His 1978 single Get On Up, Get On Down, however, reached No 41 in the UK. He also scored chart success with Don't Stop the Feeling (1979), which got to No 32 on the US RnB chart and 56 in the UK. The track was featured on the album No Stranger to Love, whose title track was sampled separately by MF Doom and Jill Scott. Ayers was a regular performer at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London during the 80s and his shows there were captured on live albums. Other live recordings include Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1972) and Live from West Port Jazz Festival Hamburg (1999). Ayers played at the Glastonbury festival five times, with his last appearance there in 2019. A tour of Nigeria with Fela Kuti in 1979, and a resulting album, Music of Many Colours (1980), was just one of many fruitful collaborations. Ayers also performed on Whitney Houston's Love Will Save the Day (1988); with Rick James on Double Trouble (1992); and with Tyler, the Creator on Cherry Bomb (2015). A soul-funk album, Roy Ayers JID002 (2020), was the brainchild of the producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The latter was a member of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, who had sampled Ayers' Running Away on their track Descriptions of a Fool (1989), and Roy Ayers Ubiquity's 1974 song Feel Like Makin' Love on Keep It Rollin', from their 1993 Midnight Marauders album. Ayers also collaborated with Erykah Badu on the singer's second album, Mama's Gun (2000). The pair recorded a new version of Everybody Loves the Sunshine for what would be Ayers' final studio album, Mahogany Vibe (2004). 'If I didn't have music I wouldn't even want to be here,' Ayers told the Los Angeles Times. 'It's like an escape when there is no escape.' Ayers married Argerie in 1973. She survives him, as do their children, Mtume and Ayana, a son, Nabil, from a relationship with Louise Braufman, and a granddaughter. Roy Edward Ayers Jr, musician and band leader, born 10 September 1940; died 4 March 2025
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Roy Ayers, jazz-soul legend whose music was heavily sampled by younger artists, dies at 84
Roy Ayers, the 'King of Neo Soul' who was born and raised on Vernon Avenue just south of downtown Los Angeles and saw more than 60 of his songs sampled by a who's who of hip-hop and soul artists, died Wednesday in New York. The bandleader and vibraphonist was 84. 'It is with great sadness that the family of legendary vibraphonist, composer and producer Roy Ayers announce his passing which occurred on March 4th, 2025 in New York City after a long illness,' his family said late Tuesday in a statement on social media. 'He lived a beautiful 84 years and will be sorely missed. His family ask that you respect their privacy at this time, a celebration of Roy's life will be forthcoming.' 'I grew up listening to the legendary Roy Ayers,' former Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday on X. ''Everybody Loves the Sunshine' is one of my favorite songs, and it has scored some of the most important moments in my life. When Doug [Emhoff] and I were dating, one of the first things Cole [Emhoff] and I bonded over was our love for Roy Ayers.' Ayers' 'Everybody Loves the Sunshine,' a minor hit when first issued, has been a Southern California anthem since its release in 1976. The longevity of the jazz-driven soul song is largely due to its use in hip-hop and soul tracks, with snippets of the song sampled by Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, J Dilla, 2Pac, J. Cole and dozens of others. Hundreds of other artists including Tyler, the Creator, Jill Scott and Madlib sampled Ayers, earning him a vaunted place among music producers and DJs. His work in the 1970s as bandleader of the six-piece band Roy Ayers Ubiquity helped spawn the subgenre called acid jazz. 'If I didn't have music, I wouldn't even want to be here,' Ayers told The Times in 2011. 'It's like an escape when there is no escape. An escape for temporary moments.' He said he was happy that he never asked anyone to sample his music, though he thought at the time that about 60 artists had done so. 'They just started doing it,' he said. 'It's been wonderful hearing people put their own spin on my sounds.' Roy Edwards Ayers was born Sept. 10, 1940, in south Los Angeles to a musical family — dad played trombone, mom played piano. He was raised against the backdrop of the storied Central Avenue Jazz scene during the 1940s and '50s. The area (known then as South Park) was a relatively peaceful beacon of African American culture, fostering luminaries including revered musicians Dexter Gordon and Charles Mingus. Ayers told The Times in 2011 how as a 5-year-old in the crowd at the Paramount Theater he received his first set of mallets from the great Lionel Hampton. 'At the time, my mother and father told me he laid some spiritual vibes on me,' Ayers said. They became his weapon of choice after picking up the vibraphone as a Thomas Jefferson High School student at age 17. Ayers released his debut album, 'West Coast Vibes,' in 1962. He relocated to New York City in 1966 after he dropped out of Los Angeles City College and began touring with flute player Herbie Mann. With Argerie Ayers, whom he married in 1973, the musician had son Mtume and daughter Ayana, who later became his manager. He also had a son, writer Nabil Ayers, with ballerina-turned-waitress Louise Braufman. As a bandleader, Ayers' albums include 20 studio records, nine collaborative releases and six live ones. He released 17 singles, primarily in the 1970s and 1980s, including 'Don't Stop the Feeling,' 'Hot,' 'Running Away,' 'Get on Up, Get on Down' and 'In the Dark.' He did the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation movie 'Coffy,' which was co-written by its star Pam Grier and director Jack Hall. Quentin Tarantino's Vista Theater retro cafe, Pam's Coffy, pays homage to the 1973 project, and Tarantino used the music from 'Coffy' in his 1997 Grier film 'Jackie Brown.' 'The president of PolyGram came to me in 1973 and said, 'Roy, can you do a soundtrack?' I said, 'Of course.' I had never done a soundtrack in my life,' he told musician Stephen Titmus in 2014. 'So they sent me out to California and showed me the movie and showed me everything I had to do and I did it.' His experience working with big bands made for easy work, he said. Ayers' career got a significant revival in the 1990s when, during hip-hop's Golden Era, sample-minded emcees plumbed his ample catalog and worked his music into theirs. His 'King of Neo Soul' title came from singer-songwriter Erykah Badu, one of the artists who partnered with him on his 2004 record 'Mahogany Vibe.' 'I wrote the song because I felt it,' Ayers told The Times in 2020 via email when asked about the place of 'Everybody Loves the Sunshine' in Southern California culture. 'Perhaps because it is sunny and lovely out on the West Coast, that came through.' Times deputy editor Nate Jackson and former staff writer Randall Roberts contributed to this report.
The Independent
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Roy Ayers death: Neo-soul pioneer behind ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine' dies aged 84
Roy Ayers, the legendary jazz - funk pioneer behind the evergreen hit 'Everybody Loves The Sunshine', has died after a long illness. He was 84. His death was confirmed by a statement on his Facebook page. 'It is with great sadness that the family of legendary vibraphonist, composer and producer Roy Ayers announce his passing which occurred on March 4th in New York City after a long illness,' it read. 'He lived a beautiful 84 years and will be sorely missed. His family ask that you respect their privacy at this time, a celebration of Roy's life will be forthcoming.' Ayers released more than 40 albums in his career, including such hits as Everybody Loves the Sunshine and Running Away. His songs have been sampled by a number of artists, from Mary J Blige, Dr Dre and Kanye West to Tyler and the Creator. Pharrell Williams has cited Ayers as one of his biggest musical inspirations. Born in Los Angeles on 10 September 1940, Ayers came from a family with a rich musical legacy. His father played the trombone and his mother the piano, and Ayers received his first set of vibraphone mallets from jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton when he was five years old. 'At the time, my mother and father told me he laid some spiritual vibes on me,' Ayers told The Los Angeles Times in a 2011 interview. In 1962, Ayers began recording as a bebop sideman and released his debut album, West Coast Vibes, the following year with the saxophonist Curtis Amy. Ayers worked with jazz flutist Herbie Mann on three albums under the Atlantic Records label – Virgo Vibes (1967), Stoned Soul Picnic (1968), and Daddy Bug (1968) – as well as on the critically acclaimed soundtrack of the Jack Hill film Coffy, starring Pam Grier. 'I incorporated vocals in order to reach a greater recognition. After four years with Herbie Mann where I only played the vibes, I found that I had a strong desire to be versatile. I wanted to play jazz, blues, soul, funk, pop, everything,' Ayers told Boston Globe in a 2005 interview. It was this desire to do more that led Ayers to start his band, Roy Ayers Ubiquity, in the early 1970s, named after his 1970 album Ubiquity. However, it was with his 1976 LP Everybody Loves The Sunshine that Ayers truly found his quintessential sound. 'It was so spontaneous. It felt wonderful. And I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound: a mix of vibraphone, piano and a synthesiser. We recorded it at night, so the sun was down, but the vibe in the studio was really nice. Pure vibes. I sang it with Debbie Darby, who we called Chicas because she was a fine chick, a good-looking girl who sang it so beautifully. She was the star of the show,' Ayers recalled about the making of ' Everybody Loves The Sunshine ' in a 2017 interview with The Guardian.
USA Today
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Roy Ayers, the 'godfather of neo-soul' behind 'Everybody Loves the Sunshine,' dies at 84
Roy Ayers, the 'godfather of neo-soul' behind 'Everybody Loves the Sunshine,' dies at 84 Roy Ayers, the jazz and R&B musician known as the "godfather of neo-soul" music, has died following a "long illness." He was 84. The news was shared on Ayers' social media accounts, including his official Facebook page, Wednesday night. "It is with great sadness that the family of legendary vibraphonist, composer and producer Roy Ayers announce his passing which occurred on March 4th, 2025 in New York City after a long illness," the statement read. "He lived a beautiful 84 years and will be sorely missed. His family ask that you respect their privacy at this time, a celebration of Roy's life will be forthcoming." USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Ayers for comment. Born on Sept. 10, 1940, in Los Angeles, Ayers grew up in a musical family; his schoolteacher mother was also a piano instructor while his father, Roy Sr., played trombone. Ayers, a choir boy, formed his first musical group while a student at Thomas Jefferson High School. Several years later, he released his debut album "West Coast Vibes" in 1963. The following decade saw him form Roy Ayers Ubiquity, which resulted in one of his best-known tracks, "Everybody Loves the Sunshine." He collaborated with Erykah Badu; Tyler, The Creator and The Roots, and is also credited with works including the soundtrack to the 1973 blaxploitation film "Coffy" starring Pam Grier. His music also inspired other musicians such as Kanye "Ye" West, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige, the latter of whom sampled his 1976 song "Searching." Ayers described neo-soul as 'a sound that encompasses all these different sounds' in an interview with the Washington Post in 2013. 'I like it because it's better than saying I just play jazz, or I just play funk, or I just play blues, or whatever,' he added. 'I play neo-soul.' As for the genre's origin, he pointed to one of his most recent releases at the time, 'Neo Soul Groove.' 'Erykah Badu was on it, and at the recording sessions, she told me, 'Roy, you're the king of neo-soul. It's your music because you're the one who started all of us doing it,'' he told the Post. 'I'm really thinking about calling the next album 'Neo Soul.' I'm stuck on that name. It's got me going.' Roy Ayers canceled 2023 concerts due to 'health complications' but hoped to 'get back to work' Ayers was still performing into his 80s, with his last live shows seemingly taking place in 2023. Months after opening in May 2023 as part of a 'farewell tour,' he updated his fans on his health issues and shared that he would be unable to get back on stage that year. 'Hello to all my fans, unfortunately, due to health complications stemming from a recent bout with Covid-19, I will be cancelling upcoming performances for 2023,' he wrote in a July 2023 Facebook post. The announcement, however ended on a positive note: 'We had high hopes I would recover in time, but all parties involved believe this is the best course of action for now. Once I have had proper time to heal and move past this I will be looking to get back to work.' This story was updated with new information.
