Roy Ayers
The Man Who Defied Categorization (1940-2025)
Today we're pouring one out for Roy Ayers, the vibraphonist and composer whose genre-bending sounds left record store clerks perpetually confused about where to file his records. Jazz? R&B? Funk? Soul? Disco? The answer was always "yes."
Ayers embodied musical freedom, starting as a straight-ahead jazz vibraphonist before expanding into a universe entirely his own. His 1976 classic Everybody Loves The Sunshine became not just a soul anthem but one of the most sampled tracks in hip-hop history.
What made Ayers special wasn't just his technical brilliance on the vibraphone (though that warm, shimmering tone was unmistakable). It was his refusal to be boxed in. In the 1970s, when jazz purists were turning up their noses at funk and disco influences, Ayers embraced them all, creating a sound that was sophisticated yet accessible, cerebral yet deeply physical.
His band Ubiquity lived up to its name, seeming to exist everywhere at once across the musical spectrum. Albums like Mystic Voyage, Vibrations and Everybody Loves The Sunshine created a blueprint for acid jazz years before the term existed, while his production work with RAMP delivered some of the smoothest soul-jazz ever pressed to vinyl.
The hip-hop generation rediscovered Ayers through countless samples. A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Tyler, the Creator, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar all dug through Ayers' catalog for those perfectly funky breaks and atmospheric vibes.
Ayers once said, "The true beauty of music is that it connects people." His music certainly connected generations, styles, and worlds. He was the bridge between jazz intellect and street-level funk, between sophisticated composition and raw groove.
So next time you're digging through crates at your local record store and come across a Roy Ayers record filed in the wrong section, just smile. That's exactly where he belongs—everywhere and nowhere, refusing to be pinned down even in death.
While his catalog is vast and worth exploring in its entirety, the 12” version of Running Away is a special one for me and has never left my record bag. It’s 7 minutes of jazz-funk seamlessly meshed with R&B and disco to create pure late-night dancefloor magic.
That slippery smooth bass, steady percussion and call and response vocals will live on forever.
Rest in rhythm, Roy.