Roy Ayers

Acid jazz, fusion, funk, R&B — it's impossible to label the music of Roy Ayers with a single stamp. The man who began as a jazz vibraphone virtuoso and became a Quiet Storm king blazed a trail full of staggering stylistic detours. When he made the move to R&B in the mid-'70s with the laid-back, sun-baked grooves of "Searchin'" and "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," he could never have guessed that those breezy tracks would be among the most sampled in hip-hop, or that the bump-and-simmer percolation of his 1977 disco hit "Running Away" would still be shaking rears in clubs decades later, and popping up in movie soundtracks and video games clear into the next century.

Get in touch with Roy Ayers' jazz and funk foundations in Next Steps.

Before he became an R&B icon, Roy Ayers was knee-deep in soul-jazz and full-on funk. He laid the bricks for acid jazz with tracks like "Stoned Soul Picnic," lacing the Fifth Dimension hit with his darting vibes, a sting-and-sway horn chart, and a hip-swiveling, hard-bop-schooled boogaloo groove. Ayers laid his claim to the blaxploitation-soundtrack crown on the score for Coffy, with tracks like "Coffy Is the Color" showing off enough wah-wah guitars and skittering funk beats to fill a dozen sequels. And the Viscount of Vibes made a jazz-funk mash-up out of Red, Black & Green, whose title track matches his sharp-shooting, jazzy riffs with conga-driven, fatback funk.

Discover the disciples of Roy Ayers, from hip-hop to soul, in Deep Cuts.

As many ears as Roy Ayers turned inside-out when he first burst onto the scene, his star has grown even brighter over the years, as his famous fans in hip-hop and R&B sampled his juicy jazz-funk jams and sometimes even earned an appearance from the man himself. Ayers added another jewel to the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul's crown when his hot licks turned up the temperature on Mary J. Blige's sizzling 1997 update of his classic "Searchin'." Ayers' percussive powers were just as in-demand a decade later when he joined Kanye West on Talib Kweli's easy-rollin', jazz-stewed "In the Mood." Today's heaviest remix kings jump at the chance to pump up Ayers tracks too — check out how NYC house hotshot Osunlade adds club-conquering punch to the jungle groove of Ayers' "Tarzan."

It boggles the mind to think how far-reaching Roy Ayers' influence has been — his early albums became the sacred scrolls of acid jazz, his laid-back instrumentals set a standard that jazz-pop's smoothest operators could only hope to approach, and he's been called the second-most-sampled artist ever — after James Brown — with everyone from Erykah Badu to A Tribe Called Quest snapping up the vibe guru's tracks. Where do you start exploring his long, luminous history? Not to worry — we've compiled the ultimate Ayers anthology for you; from dreamy, jazz-drenched R&B ballads to funk-powered dance-floor-fillers, Ayers' finest flowers are all here for the picking.