I’ve never been a jazz-funk fan and the vibraphone would be very low on my list of favourite instruments, ranking alongside the flute and just above the ukelele. But I’d have to make an exception for Roy Ayers.

Irrespective of my personal tastes, the genius of a song like Everybody Loves The Sunshine superseded those prejudices. And you’ve got to admire the man who put the soul into jazz and, more than anyone, inspired the acid jazz and nu-soul sounds of the ’90s.

He was a mentor to a new generation of singers like Erykah Badu, Mary J Blige and Jill Scott, as well as an influence on musicians as diverse as Pharrell Williams and Calvin Harris, having his work sampled by multiple hip-hop musicians like A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots.

Growing up in LA with a mum who taught the piano and a dad who played the trombone, Ayers was always going to be a musician.

According to legend, he took up the vibes as his main instrument after being taken to see the Lionel Hampton Big Band when he was only five, after which the jazz man gifted his enthusiastic child fan a pair of vibe mallets as a souvenir.

Starting out in the early ’60s as a bebop sideman, he formed his own group Ubiquity in the early ’70s and composed, produced and played on the soundtrack of the 1973 blaxploitation film Coffy with Pam Grier, most notably on the title track Coffy Is The Colour. 

His biggest hit came in 1977 with Running Away, followed two years later by a disco hit with the danceloor favourite Don’t Stop The Feeling.

Here he is performing Liquid Love, a song whose smooth groove, funky bass and the soulful vocals of Sylvia Cox sum up his signature style, from his 2005 album of unreleased tracks, Virgin Ubiquity II.

RIP Roy Ayers (1940-2025)