Roy Ayers
 

this dude needs a thread, pure genius!..
Been bumping he's coming lately,

Discuss

Definitely legendary in the jazz field. I have a few of his live at Ronnie Scott's albums and a live dvd of him. I also dug all of the samples used on Gurus Jazzmatazz album which was about as solid a hip hop album as i've ever heard. His discography is filled with amazing musicianship and accompaniment. One of my favorites for sure.

Love a lot of Roy Ayers music- jazz/funk/soul/fusion -a great mix he's mastered. I have Ubiquity, the Coffy soundtrack, Red, Black & Green and a few anthologies. Someday I'm going to pick up the album he did with Fela, Music of Many Colours .

Roy should appeal to a lot of different tastes. I hope more people get the opportunity to check him out. 2 doubles disc collections are great starting points: either the "Polydor Collection" or "Destination Motherland".

I would say Destination Motherland is a great choice for starters. I have it on vinyl but its scratched to the point its just a collectible now. Nice post.

Check out his Virgin Ubiquity CDs from a few years back! Volume 1&2 are full of unreleased tracks and volume 3 are some of the tracks remixed!

A couple of samples to try out...

ROY AYERS - Funk In The Hole [original version]. - YouTube

Guru - Take a look (at yourself) - YouTube

Roy Ayers - Love Will Bring Us Back Together (1979) - YouTube

Roy Ayers was one of the first soul/funk innovators. I saw him at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1979 and he brought down the house. A lot of his Seventies funk still sounds fresh today, 40 years later.

Performance
 

Roy Ayers is performing at the Rhythm and Joy Music Festival in Simi Valley, CA on October 4th. Also performing that day is Chaka Khan, Ronnie Laws, and Georgia Anne Muldrow.
Day Passes are $75. I got my tickets.

I've never been able to really get into him, though the Coffee soundtrack was pretty funky.

Roy is incredible! We put out a song with him a couple of years ago - Roy Ayers & Bah Samba 'Positive Vibe' - he's still rocking the show live too! :)