Singer-Vibraphonist Roy Ayers in Concert at Blue Note Jazz Club
Blue Note Jazz Club (131 West 3rd St New York City, NY 10012)
- Full Price:
- $25.00
- Our Price:
- $12.50*
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The last date listed for Roy Ayers in Concert was Thursday October 30, 2008 / 10:30pm.
2 Goldstar Member Reviews
clara
aki
he was great,Written on Oct 31 2008
seats were really close to the stage.
I enjoyed the show very much!!
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More Information About Roy Ayers in Concert
Description
By the early 1960s, Ayers was playing regularly with a number of local performers, including such fixtures on the Los Angeles jazz scene as Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, and Jack Wilson. This experience soon gave Ayers the necessary confidence to become a band leader. His first opportunity to record in that capacity came in 1963, on a project called “West Coast Vibes,” released by United Artists. In 1966 Ayers, at the invitation of bassist Reggie Workman, sat in on a gig with Herbie Mann and his Quintet, at the Lighthouse, a prominent Los Angeles jazz club. Mann was so impressed with his work that he immediately made Ayers a permanent member of the group. Ayers toured and recorded with Mann for the next four years, a period that included the release of Mann's smash hit LP, “Memphis Underground” During this stint, Ayers also recorded three solo albums--all produced by Mann: “Daddy Bug,” “Virgo Red,” and “Stoned Soul Picnic.”
Ayers left the Mann group in 1970, and moved to New York, where he quickly formed his own band, which he dubbed Ubiquity. Ubiquity did not have a stable lineup like a conventional band. It consisted instead of a constantly-shifting roster of musicians at various stages in their careers.
The next dozen years represented an incredibly prolific period for Ayers and the various versions of Ubiquity. During that span, the group recorded no less than 20 albums for Polydor. Ayers spent the first half of the seventies building an audience for his new musical mixture. His approach was to incorporate anything that he thought sounded good. “I have a totally open mind about music,” he was quoted as saying in the liner notes to the 1995 compilation Evolution: The Polydor Anthology. “I love the music I listen to-- pop, jazz, blues and soul--and I'm not closed to them. My music is a combination of styles fused into one. I like to cover the total perspective,” he continued. He also experimented quite a bit with his own instrument, becoming one of the first vibes players to alter the instrument's sound with fuzz boxes, wah-wah pedals, and other effects more commonly associated with the electric guitar. At times, the vibes were a featured solo instrument, with Ayers taking off on extended flights of mallet fancy. Just as often, however, his vibes lurked in the background, shimmering behind riffing keyboards, guitars, and horns, all driven by a thumping rhythm section.
The emergence of disco in the second half of the 1970s brought Ayers and Ubiquity into the limelight. The hit song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” from the 1976 album of the same title, became a dance floor sensation, and although it was never released as a single it probably remains the tune most associated with Ayers. In 1977, the song “Running Away” broke into the R&B top twenty, and is generally regarded as a dance club classic. The following year, Ubiquity recorded “The Freaky Deaky,” which became popular enough to inspire a dance step of the same name. These and other Ubiquity hits of the genre Ayers referred to as “disco jazz” became dance floor anthems, and have remained popular over the two decades that followed.
In 1979 Ayers and Ubiquity embarked on a nine-city tour of Nigeria with African pop superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The tour affected Ayers profoundly, and upon his return his music began to take on a more politically conscious tone. His 1981 album “Africa, Center of the World,” was a direct result of his experiences on that continent. “Feeling Good,” released in 1982, was Ayers's last album for Polydor. Ayers signed with Columbia Records in 1984, and over the next few years he scored a handful of minor R&B hits on that label, including “In the Dark” in 1984, “Slip 'n Slide” in 1985, and “Hot” in 1986.
During the 90s, Ayers split his time between leading his own band, performing live, composing and producing for other artists. Ayers also, since the end of the 1980s, had a successful collaboration with the highly regarded jazz club Ronnie Scott's in Soho, London, UK.