Jazz / Instrumental Pop, Soul-Jazz
Roy Ayers - Organ, Vocals, Arranger, Vibraphone
Andy Kman Production Coordination
Bill Pratt Liner Notes
Billy Cobham Percussion, Drums
Bob Fusco Guitar
Carol Smiley Vocals (Background)
Ed Kollis Producer
Gloria Jones Vocals (Background)
Harry Weinger Reissue Supervisor
Harry Whitaker Arranger, Vocals, Organ, Piano (Electric)
Hollis King Art Direction
Isabelle Wong Design
John Williams Bass
Jumma Santos Conga
Katsuji Abe Cover Design, Art Direction
Kevin Reeves Mastering
Minoru Aoki Photography
Myrnaleah Williams Producer
Ron Carter Bass
Rudy Van Gelder Engineer
Samuel "Little Sonny" Brown Guitar
Selwart Clarke Strings
Sonny Fortune Sax (Soprano), Flute
Victoria Hospedale Vocals (Background)
He's Coming captures Roy Ayers at the absolute top of his game, masterminding jazz-funk grooves as taut as a tightrope. Profoundly inspired by the Broadway musical Jesus Christ Superstar (and including a reading of the soundtrack's "I Don't Know How to Love Him"), the album is a deeply felt exploration of Ayers' spiritual and social beliefs, celebrating the life and rebirth of Jesus with "He's a Superstar" and its follow-up title cut before delivering the equally impassioned political manifesto "Ain't Got Time to Be Tired," a wake-up call for slumbering revolutionaries. Aided by an exemplary backing unit featuring saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist John Williams, keyboardist Harry Whitaker, and drummer Billy Cobham, Ayers channels the intensity of his message into his music, creating the most vibrant and textured music of his career to date. The atmospheric "We Live in Brooklyn, Baby" is an absolute masterpiece, a haunting hybrid of jazz, funk, and soul that exemplifies the Ayers aesthetic at its most far-reaching and inventive. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
Roy Ayers
Active Decades: '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Sep 10, 1940 in Los Angeles, CA
Genre: Jazz
Styles: Instrumental Pop, Jazz-Funk, Soul-Jazz, Fusion, Jazz-Pop
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 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. "I'm having fun laughing with it," he has said. "I don't mind what they call me, that's 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 didn't 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 Mann's hit Memphis Underground album and recording three solo albums for Atlantic under Mann's 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&Bfunk 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 Guru's 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.
---Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide |
