![]() He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his early twenties, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963 to 1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965 to 1966), and playing with Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes, and Phineas Newborn. Growing up in a musical family - his father played trombone, his mother taught him the piano - the five-year-old Ayers was given a set of vibe mallets by Lionel Hampton, but didn't start on the instrument until he was 17. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough business. Yet Ayers' own playing has always been rooted in hard bop it's crisp, lyrical, and rhythmically resilient. A tune like 1972's "Move to Groove" has a crackling backbeat that serves as the prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became almost ubiquitous on acid jazz records, and his relaxed 1976 song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" has been frequently sampled. One of the most visible and winning vibraphonists since the 1960s, Roy Ayers' reputation is that of one of the prophets of jazz-funk and acid jazz, a man decades ahead of his time.
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