Roy Ayers

小简介
作为60年代最出色和有名的颤音琴手，70年代和80年代著名的乐队的领班,Roy Ayers的最杰出之处在于他是酸爵士的领军人物,一个走在时间前面的人。他的乐队The Roy Ayers Ubiquity 1972年发行的《Move To Groove》和1976年的《Everybody Loves The Sunshine》把酸爵士领上了音乐殿堂。但Roy Ayers本人的颤音琴却仍深植于硬Bop：热情，刚硬，节奏反复有张力。
出生于一个音乐之家，Roy Ayers五岁时就从莱昂内尔.汉普敦那里得到了一副槌棒，17岁成为一个专业的颤音琴手。可以说60年代前期Roy Ayers是美国西海岸的一道风景，与Teddy Edwards，Chico Hamilton，Hampton Hawes等等优秀乐手的合作开阔了他的音乐视野，他开始把目光投向更广阔的音乐世界。在和Mann合作灌录了《Memphis Underground》之后，Roy Ayers于1970年组织了自己的乐队The Roy Ayers Ubiquity，受Miles Davis的电子乐队和赫比.汉考克的六重奏影响，The Roy Ayers Ubiquity最初演奏的是混合R&B，摇滚，爵士的音乐，但不久他就找到了方向，在R&B，Funk和Disco快感的节奏中散发出迷人的爵士香韵。这也正是酸爵士的魅力所在。
虽然后期他的Pop录音过于商业化，但是他在乐坛一直保持着旺盛的生命力。80年代初他领导自己的乐队和尼日利亚音乐家Fela Anikulapo-Kuti合作录制了专辑《Uno Melodic》。并频频出现在各个艺术家的作品中。1993年，Roy Ayers作为客串出现在Guru的爵士名盘《Jazzmatazz》的伴奏名单中。
by Richard S. Ginell
Once one of the most visible and winning jazz vibraphonists of the 1960s, then an R&B bandleader in the 1970s and 80s, Roy Ayers reputation s now that of one of the prophets of acid jazz, a man decades ahead of his time. A tune like 1972s Move to Groove by the Roy Ayers Ubiquity has a crackling backbeat that serves as the prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became, shall we say, ubiquitous on acid jazz records; and his relaxed 1976 song Everybody Loves the Sunshine has been frequently sampled. Yet Ayers own playing has always been rooted in hard bop: crisp, lyrical, rhythmically resilient. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd as the Icon Man is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough business. Im having fun laughing with it, he has said. I dont mind what they call me, thats what people do in this industry.
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 didnt start on the instrument until he was 17. He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his early 20s, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963-1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965-1966); and playing with Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes and Phineas Newborn. A session with Herbie Mann at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach led to a four-year gig with the versatile flutist (1966-1970), an experience that gave Ayers tremendous exposure and opened his ears to styles of music other than the bebop that he had grown up with.
After being featured prominently on Manns hit Memphis Underground album and recording three solo albums for Atlantic under Manns supervision, Ayers left the group in 1970 to form the Roy Ayers Ubiquity, which recorded several albums for Polydor and featured such players as Sonny Fortune, Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim, and Alphonse Mouzon. An R&B-jazz-rock band influenced by electric Miles Davis and the Herbie Hancock Sextet at first, the Ubiquity gradually shed its jazz component in favor of R&B/funk and disco. Though Ayers pop records were commercially successful, with several charted singles on the R&B charts for Polydor and Columbia, they became increasingly, perhaps correspondingly, devoid of musical interest.
In the 1980s, besides leading his bands and recording, Ayers collaborated with Nigerian musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, formed Uno Melodic Records, and produced and/or co-wrote several recordings for various artists. As the merger of hip-hop and jazz took hold in the early 90s, Ayers made a guest appearance on Gurus seminal Jazzmatazz album in 1993 and played at New York clubs with Guru and Donald Byrd. Though most of his solo records had been out of print for years, Verve issued a two-CD anthology of his work with Ubiquity and the first U.S. release of a live gig at the 1972 Montreux Jazz Festival; the latter finds the group playing excellent straight-ahead jazz, as well as jazz-rock and R&B.