tThis is a feeling that Roy Ayers was blessed from the beginning. At age 5 on all accounts, the son of two musicians and already showing talent as a pianist, he was featured behind the scenes at a Lionel Hampton gig. If you want to take a romantic view, you can see it as an act of bounty: a man who more or less popularized an instrument that was considered novel to pass the mantle along with his mallet. Hampton had broken racial barriers in the process. At a time when jazz bands were almost completely separated, Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson's Benny Goodman quartet were subtly praised by one critic as “the most beautiful example of the men who work with us as seen in today's public appearances.”
For a while, it seemed to follow in Hampton's footsteps. By his debut album, 1963, in the West Coast atmosphere, Ayers had clearly carved the space for himself in the jazz world. Running the Charlie Parker version Donary Or the monk of Terronis Well you don't need ithe was already his own man: his approach to vibraphone was a little more heated than Milt Jackson, not heading towards Avant than his friend Bobby Hutcherson.
But in the end, playing the post-bop standard wasn't the fate of the Ayers. By the late 60s I could already feel him watching beyond jazz. He began essaying modern pop with confidence, and seemed to have a certain one for Laura Nylo's album Eli and the 13th confession: Her Stone Soul Picnic was offered Title track His 1968 album. Emmy Amazing funeral, noir-style take on Bacharach and David in 1969's Dad's Bug, Bossa Nova Tune This guy is in love with you.
Ayers was just getting started. You named his 1970 album Ubiquity, then his new band, with lots of things from him. When he came with his debut in 1972, their music seemed to go everywhere: always switching from jazz to soft soul, hard funk, Gilscott Heron-style proto-torap, exhibiting a highly Catholic flavour on the cover. He's not heavy, he's my brotherI don't know how to love him from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ superstar. We live in Brooklyn, Baby.
It was jazz funk that everyone came up with phrases, but it was infinitely more difficult and smoother than the phrases the music said would later encapsulate. It can be well imagined that something like the jazz purist who felt the bitch brewing of Miles Davis represents a horrifying surrender to the commerciality it made, but that really didn't matter. For the rest of the '70s, Ayers produced one after another great album – his incredible soundtrack to Coffey on red, black, green, and blaxploitation films – gradually polishing and evenizing his style until he reached the perfection of 1976's Everybody Loves the Sunshine.
If the totally blissful title track becomes, of course, the theme song for the Ayers, then it's only a second for many in the end. Ahhhhh – what do you say?the third eye, Please keep walking. Its sound has effectively returned to Come Into Knowledge, The Solatery Album By Ramp and Rame's sophisticated Cincinnati funk band Ramp. Daylight1990's hit Bonita ApplebumAdd their names to a faintly heart-wrenching list of artists and producers who plundered Ayers' back catalogue for the beat: Dr Dre, Mary J Blige, J Cole, Tyler, The Creator, J Dilla, Kendrick Lamar, Public Enemy, Erykah Badu, Madlib, Tupac. Ayers sample is a link between Deee-Lite The groove is in the heart and NWA's Fuck the police;It's also the only thing that MF Doom had in common with the Boys on Backstreet.
Ayers was a great bandleader in old-fashioned jazz style. It was able to attract incredible musicians (David Bowie had both drummer Dennis Davis and guitarist Carlos Alomer in a pinch from the Ayers. He descended to songwriter Edwin Birdson, when he was a demo soldier struggling to follow his path in the New York jazz scene recently. He gave vocalist Dee Bridgewater the starring role in the Coffey soundtrack at the beginning of her career. He was also able to move sensitively to the changes in the times. The sound of disco lurking in the background of people who love the sunlight blows into the air, but the chirping of him and the birds produced one of its indelible classics, one of its indelible classics. run away.
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His disco embrace provided more ammunition to the Ayers detractors: as did the glossy sound, but frankly it's a rather miserable individual who can't grasp the glory of the hot ice-cool yet the best funky opening track Love brings us back. But if the detractor thought the direction he was heading was now obvious, they wanted shock. The heels of the refined love fantasy of the 1980s have come with music in many colors. This is a collaboration with Ferakty, consisting of two live and thrilling side tracks recorded at the end of a joint Africa tour that perfectly blends Kuti's Afrobeat and Ayers' jazz funk. That influence continued to bring through Ayers' subsequent album Africa: Centre of the World and a lot of love in 1983. He was simultaneously producing slinky post-disco for women in the 80s and their singer Sylvia Striplelin. He may have stopped using ubiquitous names, but his sounds were still everywhere.
The Ayers continued to release new albums, but never fully regained the commercial format they found at Ubiquity's Peak. But by then, it had little importance. The crate drilling producers and DJs' attention meant that the Ayers name was correctly respected by a new generation of artists. His influence actually hanged very heavily on both acid jazz and neo soul – he worked with Badu and Alicia Keys – and whatever hip-hop took, Ayers' music always seemed to have a role in it: he stood up with Granford Marsalis and Donald Bird, Jazz Matas, a rap of Jazz Matas, Guru's apparrated solo album. Cherry bombs, the latter called “a lovely young man.” He toured relentlessly, insisting that he wanted to be on stage “until I die.”
“Everyone matters,” he reasoned. It seems to be a perfect explanation not only for his constant gigs, but also for Roy Ayers' overall boundless musical approach.
