Very rarely does Adelaide get a musical treat like the upcoming intimate Roy Ayers show at Rocket Bar. Ayers has been called the godfather of neo-soul, the king of acid jazz, the king of jazz-funk and he's one of the most sampled artists in the history of music. Onion was honoured to speak to a true icon of popular music...

No matter what genre Ayers has covered in his rich career, one thing about his music is that it always makes you feel good, leaving a smile on your face.

“I’m a smiley type of guy,” says Ayers. “I smile a lot anyway, but they [the audience] put that smile on your face when they let you know they appreciate you, especially when I was in Sydney - oh it was wonderful, and I’m going all over Australia. So, I’m looking forward to all the different crowds in the various places, I know the Australians have always loved music. They’ve always been very appreciative, they’ve always let me know they enjoy the music and I love that.”

Ayers’ positivism whether you listen to his music or speak to him is infectious. His positive outlook comes from his mother.

“She used to tell me all the time ‘One day I’m going to see your name in lights’. She inspired me and that inspiration still stays in my heart and soul.”

Best known for tracks such as Everybody Loves The Sunshine, We Live In Brooklyn, Searching and Running Away, Ayers is one of the few artists who is an icon of the hip hop, house, disco, funk, R&B and jazz communities. Ayers says he is blessed by the labels that critics and musicians have called him such as the godfather of neo-soul and the king of acid jazz.

“I think it’s a wonderful blessing when people give you titles. Gilles Peterson said that my music was acid jazz and first I said ‘Wow acid jazz’. And I thought about the hallucinogenic drug and I said ‘I’m not like acid’. Then I thought about it again and he means my music is like acid that eats into things, it eats into one's brain. Then I said ‘Acid, that’s cool! And I asked Gilles and Gilles said ‘That’s right! That’s what I mean. It sticks with you and it stays there and it drives you crazy after a while because it’s so good’. Then I’ve seen the people’s reaction to the music and they go crazy and get out of control and that’s good, not violently, but they just get emotionally involved. It’s so wonderful to see people do that to go from ‘yeah' to ‘yeaaahhhh!’ It’s wonderful to turn people on like that and I love it when they give me definitions and titles for my music.”
Ayers, who is the most famous vibraphone player in the world and is one of the most sampled artists in the history of popular music, has a project in mind where he resamples the samplers.

“I haven’t done that yet but I’m thinking about doing that where Roy Ayers resamples the samplers. I’ve got an idea, I just did something with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest and he put me on one song. So, I’ve been talking to him about doing some stuff with them because they sampled me. So, I might just get it done and come out with it in the next year or so. It would be good right? I am one of the most sampled in history of anybody. It’s incredible!”

Indeed Ayers agrees that DJ culture and sampling culture has introduced him to a younger audience. He says he was first made aware of artists sampling his work through his children.

“When it first started happening in the ‘80s and my kids they were young, maybe in their early teens, and they said ‘Dad, I heard your record’ and I said ‘Which record?’ And they said ‘Don’t Stop The Feeling’ and I said ‘You heard Don’t Stop The Feeling c’mon?’ and they said ‘’I heard Running Away’ and I said ‘What?’ And I didn’t even know about it because at that time we weren’t really collecting on samples. They hadn’t got onto it because this must have been ‘84 or ‘85 so that’s when they started but I know James Brown had been sampled before me because he was over at Polydor too. I don’t think he got paid for a lot of his stuff ‘cause everybody was just sampling James Brown and I don’t think he got paid for a lot of the early, early stuff. I think they had to go back and get some stuff straightened out.”

A few years ago some of Ayers' vaulted recordings from his classic mid to late ‘70s period was released for the first time on the Virgin Ubiquity releases. Ayers, who worked many 20-hour sessions during this time, says there is more recordings in the vaults from his classic period.

“I have so many records, so many masters in the vault. So much stuff, like you said 20 hours a day, I used to work 20 hours in the studio, 25 hours or 26 hours. I’d go in the studio at night and come out the next day or the next night, 24 hours later. I don’t do that now, I do like five hours, and I don’t do it now man, but I used to really burn it up. That’s a big part of my career - the interesting hours you put into it and we used to be in the studio and fall asleep and we would spend $150 an hour! It was crazy, we’d fall asleep and wake up and the tape would be reeling, it would be going around on the reel. Everybody would be asleep - the engineer, all the musicians and we’d wake up and say ‘Oh man, wake up!’ Cause we’d be listening back to it and then we’d say ‘Let’s go home man; we’ll come back tomorrow or the next day'. Oh, it was so much fun!”

David Knight

Roy Ayers plays Rocket Bar on Sun Oct 19 with The Transatlantics and DJs Japeye and Kano172