He got involved in the West Coast jazz scene in his early twenties, recording with Curtis Amy (1962), Jack Wilson (1963 to 1967), and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (1965 to 1966), and playing with Teddy Edwards, Chico Hamilton, Hampton Hawes, and Phineas Newborn. 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. His own reaction to being canonized by the hip-hop crowd is tempered with the detachment of a survivor in a rough business.
Yet Ayers' own playing has always been rooted in hard bop it's crisp, lyrical, and rhythmically resilient. A tune like 1972's "Move to Groove" has a crackling backbeat that serves as the prototype for the shuffling hip-hop groove that became almost ubiquitous on acid jazz records, and his relaxed 1976 song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" has been frequently sampled.
"I Am Your Mind', the final track, is the most driving of the 13 presented here, its hard, snapping bass underpinning the multi-tracked whispers, which are a curious bit of what could only be considered "solipsistic funk." Knowing that the head keeps the body from unleashing the freedom that resides within, Ayers, on this unearthed set, echoes the paradigm of another long-lived head-funker: Free your mind and your ass will follow.One of the most visible and winning vibraphonists since the 1960s, Roy Ayers' reputation is that of one of the prophets of jazz-funk and acid jazz, a man decades ahead of his time. Here, she flutters on suave yet tricky tracks like "Mystic Voyage (Version)" and "Boogie Down" (wherein she urges her lover with the undeniable order "pour yourself on me"). More soothing is Carla Vaughn, who would go on to sing with Earth, Wind & Fire.
But when both ladies lay off the caterwauling, the vibraslap and horn lines recline like a cat napping in a patch of warm light. The wailing of both Merry Clayton and Sylvia Cox counteracts the otherwise mellow bump of "Brand New Feeling", as they match the analog sine waves with some dog-whistling of their own. The only suggestion of dating comes from the revolving cast of ladybirds, who imitate the leather-lunged female vocal style of the day, piercing through the brass and bass in the manner of disco-divas like Patti LaBelle and Minnie Riperton. That so-slick sound of joy reverberates through titles like "What's the T?" and "Green and Gold", proving the vibed tinges of his loving funk to be almost ageless. Originally of the hard bop school, Ayers embraced the strains of black music coming from the radio, incorporating more R&B smoothness and disco push into his jazz-based playing.
Though Virgin Ubiquity is billed as a collection of thirteen never-before-released tracks, it's far more than a mere scrap heap of outtakes, as each of its "from the vault" cuts luxuriate on the comfortable musical bed that Ayers mastered from '76 through '81. Since his 1963 debut, Ayers has worked with everyone from Herbie Mann and Guru to Fela Kuti and Erykah Badu, and his shimmering sound has foreshadowed acid jazz and fueled hip-hop, as well as gracing contemporary R&B. Not quite on par with, say, James Brown uncovering hours of tape from his on-the-one prime, the promise of prodigious unreleased songs from the peak of Ayers' powers is reason to take notice nonetheless.