In 1981, Ayers produced an album with the singer Sylvia Striplin, Give Me Your Love (Uno Melodic Records, 1981). In 1980, Phonodisk released Music of Many Colors in Nigeria, featuring one side led by Ayers' group and the other led by Africa '70. In the late 1970s, Ayers toured in Nigeria for six weeks with Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, one of the African continent's most recognizable musicians. In late 1979, Ayers scored his only top ten single on Billboard's Hot Disco/Dance chart with "Don't Stop The Feeling", which was also the leadoff single from his 1980 album No Stranger to Love, whose title track was sampled in Jill Scott's 2001 song "Watching Me" from her debut album Who Is Jill Scott? That fall, he had his biggest hit with "Running Away". In 1977, Ayers produced an album by the group RAMP, Come into Knowledge. He later moved from a jazz-funk sound to R&B, as seen on Mystic Voyage, which featured the songs "Evolution" and the underground disco hit "Brother Green (The Disco King)", as well as the title track from his 1976 album Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Īyers was responsible for the highly regarded soundtrack to Jack Hill's 1973 blaxploitation film Coffy, which starred Pam Grier. In the early 1970s, Roy Ayers started his own band called Roy Ayers Ubiquity, a name he chose because ubiquity means a state of being everywhere at the same time. CareerĪyers started recording as a bebop sideman in 1962 and rose to prominence when he dropped out of City College and joined jazz flutist Herbie Mann in 1966. His high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, produced various talented musicians, such as Dexter Gordon. During high school, Ayers sang in the church choir and fronted a band named The Latin Lyrics, in which he played steel guitar and piano. Roy would likely have been exposed to music as it not only emanated from the many nightclubs and bars in the area, but also poured out of many of the homes where the musicians who kept the scene alive lived in and around Central. The schools he attended (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School) were all close to the famed Central Avenue, Los Angeles' equivalent of Harlem's Lenox Avenue and Chicago's State Street. The area of Los Angeles that Ayers grew up in, South Park (later known as South Central) was at the center of the Southern California Black music scene. At the age of five, he was given his first pair of vibraphone mallets by Lionel Hampton. He grew up in a musical family, where his father played trombone and his mother played piano. ContentsĪyers was born on Septemin Los Angeles. At one time, he was said to have more sampled hits by rappers than any other artist.
He is best known for his compositions "Everybody Loves the Sunshine", "Searchin", and "Running Away". He is a key figure in the acid jazz movement, and has been dubbed "The Godfather of Neo Soul". Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk. Roy Ayers (born September 10, 1940) is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer, vibraphone player, and music producer.
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