Roy Ayers

USA

Born: 10 September 1940

Years Active: 60, 70, 80, 90, 2000

Genres: Jazz, Easy Listening

Styles: Jazz-Funk, Fusion, Soul Jazz/Groove, Instrumental Pop, Easy Listening, Soul Jazz, Hard Bop, Jazz-Pop, Contemporary Jazz

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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 1972's "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 alway...

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