Roy Ayers wrote “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” in response to all the smog in Los Angeles which caused people to have more of an appreciation for the sun. Ayers had started his career playing bebop in the early ’60s. He became inspired to play the vibraphone after Lionel Hampton gave him a pair of mallets when he was five-years-old. In the ’70s, he formed his band Roy Ayers Ubiquity and started pioneering soul-jazz. “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” was a peak moment of his Ubiquity years and became his most recognizable song and album. It has been prodigiously sampled most famously for Mary J. Blige’s “My Life.”  This period of Roy Ayers’ career is credited with being the nucleus of the Acid Jazz movement of the ’90s. Ayers has kept busy most recently appearing on Tyler The Creator’s 2015 Cherry Bomb album. He attracted a new generation of fans as the host of the fictitious Fusion FM radio station in Grand Theft Auto IV. In 2020, he collaborated with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge for the Roy Ayers JID002 album.Â
