Roy Ayers (born September 10, 1940) is an American funk, soul and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a jazz player, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records be . .   Expand    Wikipedia

Roy Ayers (born September 10, 1940) is an American funk, soul and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a jazz player, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records before his tenure at Polydor Records, during which he progressed a new R&B style, slowly molding the new Disco genre. Ayers was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in a musical family. At the age of five, Lionel Hampton gave him his first pair of mallets, which led to the vibraphone being his trademark sound for decades. The area of Los Angeles that Ayers grew up in, now known as "South Central", but then known as "South Park", was the epicenter of the Southern California Black Music Scene. The schools Roy attended (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School) were all close to the famed Central Avenue, Los Angeles' equivalent of Harlem's Lenox Avenue and Chicago's State Street. On any given day, Roy would have been likely to be exposed to music as it not only emanated from the many nightclubs and bars in the area, but also poured out of many of the homes where the musicians who kept the scene alive lived in and around Central. Thomas Jefferson High School, from which Ayers graduated, gave to the music and jazz worlds some of its brightest stars, such as Dexter Gordon.

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