AccuRadio Song Of The Day-Roy Ayers

Artist:Roy Ayers

Song:Everybody Loves the Sunshine

Album:The Best of Roy Ayers

Jazz vibraphonist Roy Ayers became a hip hop icon when the 1976 song Everybody Loves the Sunshine was picked up by radio stations and then became the most sampled song in hip hop history despite not being released as a single. I'll get to that last part in a minute. Ayers was born Sept. 10, 1940 in Los Angeles. His father played trombone and his mother played piano. Jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton gave him his first mallets at age five. Ayers lived in South Central Los Angeles and attended Thomas Jefferson High School which was a breeding ground for jazz musicians. He led a high school band where he played steel guitar and piano. After graduating high school, he started playing clubs and released the 1963 album West Coast Vibes on United Artists. He had been playing the vibraphone at home but that was always his preferred instrument. After dropping out of Los Angeles City College, Ayers joined flautist Herbie Mann's band in 1966. And that's how he got a record deal with Mann's label Atlantic Records. He recorded three albums for Atlantic followed by two for Columbia. Then he signed with Polydor Records in 1970. At first, Ayers wanted to record jazz fusion music pioneered by the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew along with Weather Report and Return to Forever. The band was called Roy Ayers Ubiquity. By the mid-70s, Ayers had decided to add funk to his music. This was no doubt influenced by guys like George Clinton. Ayers didn't think he was abandoning jazz. He was just adding funk elements to his music. The high point of this period was when the 1979 album Everybody Loves the Sunshine was a top ten R&B album. The single Don't Stop the Feeling was his highest charting single. Believe it or not, Everybody Loves the Sunshine was never released as a single. Ayers didn't think the song was a potential hit. So it was a big surprise to Ayers and Polydor when radio stations played it. We don't know how big it was because Billboard doesn't keep track of songs that aren't released as singles. The residual effect was when hip hop guys started sampling the song. It's been sampled over 200 times including My Life by Mary J. Blige and Book of Life by Common. Ayers wrote and produced the album. Musicians are Philip Woo on piano, Ronald "Head" Drayton on guitar, Shaun Solomon on bass, Doug Rhodes on drums and Chano O'Ferral on congas. The background vocals are by Deborah "Chicas" Darby. This was Ayers' band at the time and they are in the video clip. This comp covers the Polydor years. Ayers left Polydor in 1982 and mostly recorded for smaller labels and toured until his death on Mar. 4, 2025 at age 85. Here's Roy Ayers performing Everybody Loves the Sunshine on Soul Train 1979.