Jazz musician Roy Ayers, who influenced hip-hop and R&B stars, dies aged 84
Ayers had 12 albums in the Billboard 200 album charts.
Roy Ayers, a jazz vibraphonist, keyboardist, composer and vocalist known for his funky 1976 hit Everybody Loves The Sunshine that has been sampled by such R&B and rap heavyweights as Mary J Blige, NWA, Dr Dre and Ice Cube, has died aged 84.
The Ayers family said in a Facebook post that he died on Tuesday in New York City after suffering from a long illness.
“He lived a beautiful 84 years and will be sorely missed,” it said.
Ayers had 12 albums in the Billboard 200 album charts, the highest being You Send Me in 1978 at No 48. His album The Best Of Roy Ayers spent 50 weeks on the Contemporary Jazz Album chart.
His music never went out of style, appearing in the 2019 Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack.
His song Running Away propelled A Tribe Called Quest’s 1989 opus Description Of A Fool, and the song was sampled by Big Daddy Kane and Common.
Ayers was heard on Tyler, the Creator’s album Cherry Bomb and Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun.
“Well, I have more sampled hits than anybody,” he said in a 2004 interview with Wax Poetics magazine. “I might not have more samples than James Brown, but I’ve had more sampled hits. Oh, man, and there’s a few I don’t know about.”
One of Ayers’ most popular albums was Lifeline, which peaked at No 9 on what has become the Top R&B/Hip-hop chart in 1977 and contained the hit Running Away, which peaked at No 19 on the R&B chart and became a massive club hit.
