Picture: Jason Koerner/Getty Pictures
Roy Ayers, who wrote the oft-sampled “Everyone Loves the Sunshine” and the soundtrack to Coffy, has died. He used to be 84. Ayers’s circle of relatives broke the scoop of his demise to Selection, writing ““It’s with nice disappointment that the circle of relatives of mythical vibraphonist, composer, and manufacturer Roy Ayers announce his passing which came about on March 4, 2025 in New York Town after an extended sickness.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1940, Ayers first turned into enamored with the viberaphone at 5-years-old, after seeing Lionel Hampton’s Large Band. Ayers went to Los Angeles Town Faculty to review complicated track concept. His first album, West Coast Vibes, dropped in 1963.
Ayers wrote and produced the soundtrack for Coffy in 1973. The blaxploitation movie stars Pam Grier as a nurse who is going on a roaring rampage of revenge in opposition to the drug sellers and mob bosses in her town.
Via samples and lines, Ayers maintained a presence in track all over the a long time. His paintings is sampled in such songs as A Tribe Referred to as Quest’s “Bonita Applebaum” and Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s “Get Cash,” and he carried out on Tyler the Writer’s “In finding Your Wings.”
His band, the Roy Ayers Ubiquity, launched “Everyone Loves the Sunshine” in 1976. The tune has been coated by means of D’Angelo, Cibo Matto, Seu Jorge, and extra. The tune has been sampled or interpolated over 150 instances, in keeping with Whosampled. Notable samplers come with Mary J. Blige, Tupac Shakur, Not unusual, the Black Eyed Peas, Snoop Dogg, or even Björk.
