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His approach was to incorporate anything that he thought sounded good. Ayers spent the first half of the seventies building an audience for his new musical mixture. During that span, the group recorded no less than 20 albums for Polydor. The next dozen years represented an incredibly prolific period for Ayers and the various versions of Ubiquity. 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. The band included established pros like bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist Sonny Fortune newcomer vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and others. It consisted instead of a constantly- shifting roster of musicians at various stages in their careers. Ubiquity did not have a stable lineup like a conventional band. 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.” Read moreĪyers left the Mann group in 1970, and moved to New York, where he quickly formed his own band, which he dubbed Ubiquity. Mann was so impressed with his work that he immediately made Ayers a permanent member of the group. 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.
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His first opportunity to record in that capacity came in 1963, on a project called “West Coast Vibes,” released by United Artists. This experience soon gave Ayers the necessary confidence to become a band leader. 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.īy 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. After the show, Hampton handed Ayers a pair of mallets, sealing the youngster's musical destiny with that simple gesture. His introduction to the vibraphone came at the age of six, when his parents took him to a Lionel Hampton concert. Thanks to the influence of his mother, a piano teacher, and his father, a trombone player, Ayers was a musical child. His music has often been described as being years ahead of it's time.Īyers was born on September 10, 1940, in Los Angeles, California. 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. During the 1970s and 80s he came to change his focus and became one of the leading figures in R&B and jazz/funk. Roy Ayers was during the 1960s one of the most prominent and leading jazz vibraphone players in America. Titles include "Spread It", "If You Wanna See The Sunshine", "The Five Flies", "Midnight After Dark", and "Love Is Love".Roy Ayers - vibraphone, composer, bandleader, recording artist The vocals are especially great – wrapped up warmly along the rhythms, mixing the male/female leads of Jimmy Haslip and Sylvia Cox with some additional backing vocals from group members – creating a righteous ensemble sound that's totally wonderful, and very much in the Roy Ayers spirit. A killer side project from Roy Ayers – recorded right around the same time as the Ramp album, but with a different feel over all – proof that the Ayers empire was really exploding at the end of the 70s! The vibe here is quite similar to some of Roy's own albums over at Polydor – a great balance between upbeat groovers and mellower steppers – all done with a nice undercurrent of jazz, thanks to some sweet keyboards from Philip Woo and saxes from Justo Almario – both of who played often with Ayers as well.