Roy Ayers Ubiquity, Red Black & Green

Everybody hates Smooth Jazz but everybody wants some of it in their lives. To get around this fact people change what it is called.

Smooth Jazz started as Fusion and Crossover jazz in the 1970s when different cuts of it were played on jazz, R&B, and early FM rock radio stations. It ruled as a radio format, tied to Quiet Storm, from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s. The format quickly died out when it was largely replaced in the industry by downtempo and chilled out ambient electronica. I think Smooth Jazz radio survives in Atlanta.

Over in the UK they came up with the term Acid Jazz to get away with listening to something cooler. Basically, the early 1970s jazz-soul-funk-Latin roots of Acid Jazz were also the birth of Smooth Jazz. That has kind of morphed into the more electronic nu jazz of today.

The pioneers of Smooth Jazz were all serious boppers who needed to survive, even thrive, in the 1970s but did so in ways that sounded, and felt, right. The Big Four are probably George Benson, Grover Washington, Jr, Ramsey Lewis, and Roy Ayers. The king of Acid Jazz may well be Ayers, a vibraphonist and bandleader who tempered his post-bop bonafides with mainstream instincts and a real feel for funk and soul. To understand the difference between the Jazz Roy Ayers and the Pop Roy Ayers check out his extended live jam of Burt Bacharach’s lovely “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”  and then compare it to the funkier, bass-heavy studio version he cut the previous year. Both are quality bossa novas that feature fractured, percussive vibraphone solos from Ayers but one will get you dirty looks from your kids and excluded from the general dating pool while one is still being played in urban haberdasheries and wine bars.

When I want some guilt free Smooth Jazz in my life one of the first platters I reach for is Red, Black & Green by Roy Ayers Ubiquity.

Art

This is a pretty sweet album cover though it initially looks more like an angry protest album rather than the groovy party platter that is found within its sleeves. There are political sentiments in the lyrics on this album but they are at odds with the good-time music. Likewise, the title Red, Black & Green refers to the colors of the Pan-African flag — AKA the flag of Black Liberation.

The way the designers basically took a xerox of a Roy Ayers portrait and added a splash of color to the typography reminds me of the esthetic of the Elenco label. In the early 1960s this Brazilian record company specialized in putting out a number of the greatest albums  by the initial wave of artists from Rio’s Bossa Nova scene.

Background

Roy Ayers released a few albums under his own name during the 1960s that were more squarely in the jazz vein (all recommended). But, during that fast-moving decade the vibraphonist was concurrently getting a crash course in how to successfully cross over with jazz as part of flutist Herbie Mann’s outfit (Ayers also spent a long stretch as a featured soloist with the cocktail jazz pianist Jack Wilson). As a musician, Herbie Mann had long proved adept at following popular trends in jazz, going from Bop to Cool during the 1950s and from bossa nova and Latin to soul-jazz in the ’60s. Ayers recorded in a number of styles with the flutist and was there for such best-selling Herbie Mann crossover Jazz/R&B sets as Muscle Shoals Nitty Gritty. Ayers also learned important business lessons from Mann that helped him as a bandleader and recording artist when he started his funky crossover jazz-soul band Ubiquity.

 

To take a big step back, jazz didn’t just change the history of music it also changed how a few instruments were actually played. The saxophone was created to be used more like a tuba than how Charlie Parker played it. Likewise, the vibes were supposed to be part of the percussion family and not played as a solo instrument. Many greats, from Red Norvo to Lionel Hampton, changed how the vibes were used but Milt Jackson was probably the most significant vibraphonist in history. Jackson’s melodically rich, harmonically searching style was subsumed into every subsequent jazz vibist, regardless of how different they were — from Cal Tjader to Bobby Hutcherson to Gary Burton. Roy Ayers understands, and has absorbed the likes of Jackson, Tjader, and (his childhood friend) Hutcherson but he is way more of show-boat than any of them — even compared to  Lionel Hampton, the original master showman. Roy Ayers’ vibraphone solos often turn into flashy, repetitive percussive showcases of speed and agility much more often then fluidly melodic explorations of harmony. While most vibraphonists play their instrument like a piano, or even a tenor saxophone, Ayers often plays them like a melodic drummer — think of Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa.

To get back to the crossover fusion scene that predated Smooth Jazz – In the early 1970s it wasn’t just that serious jazz artists such as Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, and even Ahmad Jamal were crossing over with funky, plugged-in jazz but that pop groups such as Earth, Wind & Fire and Steely Dan were also seriously jazzy. Around 1970 Roy Ayers assembled Ubiquity, his band that married the jazzy soul of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and The Temptations with the taut funk of James Brown and the Kaleidoscope hippy R&B rock of Sly Stone. Soul during the early 1970s was so tied into jazz that Marvin Gaye could bring a gritty Detroit bop soloist to lay out all over What’s Going On without it drawing special notice. Likewise, Donny Hathaway’s Rhodes keyboard intro to Aretha Franklin’s brilliantly breezy “Day Dreaming” could quote directly from Deodato’s jazz-funk cover of “Thus Sprech Zarathustra” and nobody batted an eye.

Music

Roy Ayers’ third album with Ubiquity, Red, Black & Green, is split between instrumental versions of soul hits of the day and original tunes, often with vocals, that were written by Ayers and his band members. Joining Ubiquity in the studio were a couple of jazz ringers – Charles Tolliver on trumpet and Sonny Fortune on soprano sax are the two that dominate. I will also call out the great Dennis Davis who would become David Bowie’s go-to drummer starting with Young Americans all the way through to Scary Monsters.

The originals are solid here and the instrumental covers really shine, in part because the writing on those particular pop tunes is so strong and partly because of how Ayers and Co. treat them. The album opens with a cover of Bill Withers’ very first hit, “Ain’t No Sunshine.” This song wasn’t yet a classic in 1971 —  it was still current events. The tune introduced a 32 year old Navy veteran to a long run on the pop and R&B charts. Withers’ first couple of albums were largely stripped-down and acoustic but “Ain’t No Sunshine” isn’t hurt at all from getting the lavish Roy Ayers penthouse jazz-soul treatment. “Henceforth” is an Ayers social conscience original that could have come off of a Temptations psychedelic Soul album helmed by Norman Whitfield. A cover of “Day Dreaming” comes next and shows what a gifted songwriter Aretha Franklin was even though she is primary thought of as an interpretive vocalist. If you doubt that the Golden Age of Melody is over just take a listen to “Day Dreaming.” This classic is rhythmically irresistible and harmonically fascinating yet also instantly catchy and unforgettable. You can hum it in the shower after hearing it just once but it doesn’t wear out its welcome after repeated listening. They may still write ‘em like this but they don’t often make it up the charts anymore. The sinuous grooves of the first three tunes make side A seem longer than a mere 16 minutes even as those minutes fly by.

The title track, “Red, Black & Green,” starts off the flipside. The most striking thing about this one isn’t really the pointed African-nationalism of the lyrics but the stabbing, very non-swinging keyboard vamp that starts the song off and points the way towards both austere classical minimalism and German electronica. Not to bad, Mr. Roy Ayers. The tune is brisk and uptempo but Charles Tolliver’s trumpet is recorded to sound like it came off of the echo-y slo-mo world of The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rolling Stone.” Is this a foreshadowing of the LP’s final track? The Latin-ate “Cocoa Butter,” another original tune, starts off like Cal Tjader before turning into a soulful direction. This one is a real groover with Ayers and the bassist zooming well past the tempo of the backing band in a way that could trip things up if anybody took a wrong step. Everybody navigates “Cocoa Butter” perfectly and it all feels just-right. “Rhythms Of Your Mind” starts off slow and spacey but once the funk bass kicks in the entire band keeps ramping things up in a way that is at once bluesy & organic and psychedelic & trippy — a 1960s club cut recast as an early ’70s stepper.

The final track is my favorite on the album. Its an instrumental reading of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” that cuts the trumpet but keeps the orchestral flourishes of the timeless Temptations hit while speeding up the tempo. The bassist is the one who keeps returning to the central figure of the vocal hit but he goes completely crazy whenever Roy Ayers solos. The rare Soul song to make it to heavy FM rock rotation, “Papa…” is one of the countless Motown songs that go against the grumpy Soul-fan false narrative that the label’s tunes are always chirpy and upbeat. Overall, Motown songs catalog a world where “happiness is just an illusion/Filled with sadness and confusion” but its hard to think of a darker lyric than “Papa” summing it all up with —  “All he left us was alone.”Memories of the lyrics help propel Roy Ayers instrumental version which is equally spellbinding. The small string section used to layout the melody in the chorus really helps the mood too.

Red, Black, & Green plays right at a picnic or a night time party. Listen to it intently or play it as background music — it still comes out sounding great.

I have a number of Roy Ayers LP’s — mainly the earlier in the 1970s you go the better these records are. As the decade progressed Ayers kept evolving further away from jazz and went deeper into R&B, including Disco, changing along with the pop music of the era. He had a lot of success during this time but almost exclusively with black audiences — especially when compared to his Roots-of-Smooth-Jazz contemporaries.  George Benson deservedly became a big crossover pop star while Grover Washington, Jr really went on to define Smooth Jazz with 1980’s Winelight — an album that was played in condos and pool parties in any, and all, neighborhoods. Even Herbie Hancock crossed over huge with “Rockit.” This pure pop instrumental funk hit was wisely helped along with a robot-filled music video that went on heavy MTV rotation during a time when the network largely avoided R&B and rap videos (and the artists who made them).

Through it all, Roy Ayers kept plugging away, releasing albums regularly until 1989. His career was far from over though as by the mid 1990s the British Acid Jazz scene — and numerous hip-hop samples — made Roy Ayers cool again. He’s never really been away since.

You don’t need every Roy Ayers record in your life. 1977’s Lifeline is a safe cutoff point but I would also call-out out two Roy Ayers sets from the birth of the 1980s as definitely worth owning. Music of Many Colors finds Roy Ayers, and select friends, sitting in with Fela and his band — its a total blast. The next year’s Africa Is The Center of the World was recorded in the USA but the music on it more than lives up to its title even if it has a faint residue of edu-tainment about it — Roy Ayers was on a mission.

Those of you who are already into Roy Ayers but want to explore similar jazz-goes-cosmically-funky platrers I would recommend a few of the jazz-soul crossover albums by Pharoah Saunders and Normon Connors listed towards the lower half of this post.

Even avant-garde free-jazzers went smooth once upon a time.

— Nick Dedina