What Is Roy Ayers' Net Worth?
Roy Ayers is an American composer, musician, and music producer who has a net worth of $10 million. Roy Ayers plays the vibraphone and keyboards, and his musical styles include jazz, jazz fusion, funk, acid jazz, disco, R&B, soul jazz, house, and hip hop. Roy has released more than 30 studio albums, such as "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" (1976), "Let's Do It" (1978), "Fever" (1979), "Love Fantasy" (1980), "Feeling Good" (1982), "You Might Be Surprised" (1985), "Nasté" (1995), and "Perfection" (2000). Ayers has been nicknamed "The Godfather of Neo Soul" and is considered a pioneer of the jazz-funk genre and an important figure in the acid jazz genre. Some of Roy's best-known compositions include "Searchin," "Everybody Loves The Sunshine," and "Running Away," and he has played as a sideman on albums by Curtis Amy, Herbie Mann, David Newman, Leroy Vinnegar, Gerald Wilson, Jack Wilson, and Erykah Badu.
Early Life
Roy Ayers was born Roy Edward Ayers, Jr. on September, 10 1940, in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Ruby, was a piano instructor and schoolteacher, and his father, Roy Sr., was a trombonist who sometimes worked as a parking attendant. According to Roy's official website, by the age of 5, he was "playing boogie woogie tunes on the piano," and he began playing steel guitar when he was 9 years old. He later played flute, drums, and trumpet. When Ayers was a child, his parents let him attend a concert that featured Lionel Hampton's Big Band. While Hampton was walking down the aisle to thank the audience, he noticed 5-year-old Ayers and gave him a pair of vibe mallets, which Roy has called "the gift of a lifetime." During Ayers' youth, he took piano lessons and sang in the church choir. He attended Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School, and as a teenager, he was the frontman, pianist, and steel guitarist of a band called The Latin Lyrics.
Career
In 1962, Roy began his music career as a bebop sideman, and he dropped out of L.A.'s City College to join jazz flautist Herbie Mann in the mid-1960s. In the '60s, he released the albums "West Coast Vibes" (1963), "Virgo Vibes" (1967), "Stoned Soul Picnic" (1968), and "Daddy Bug" (1969), and in the early '70s, he launched the band Roy Ayers Ubiquity. He released 10 albums with Roy Ayers Ubiquity, with "Change Up the Groove" (1974), "Mystic Voyage" (1975), "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" (1976), "Vibrations" (1976), "Lifeline" (1977), and "Starbooty" (1978) making it onto the "Billboard" 200 chart. "Lifeline" reached the top 10 on the "Billboard" Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Roy composed, arranged, and produced the 1973 "Coffy" soundtrack, which reached #31 on the Billboard Jazz LPs chart. In 1977, he produced the RAMP album "Come into Knowledge" and released the single "Running Away," which peaked at #19 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
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In 1978, Ayers released the album "Let's Do It," and it reached #33 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. His next six albums, "You Send Me" (1978), "Fever" (1979), "No Stranger to Love" (1979), "Love Fantasy" (1980), "Africa, Center of the World" (1981), and "Feeling Good" (1982), also charted on the "Billboard" 200, and they all reached the top 50 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In 1979, Roy had a top 10 hit on the Hot Disco/Dance chart with "Don't Stop The Feeling." In the late '70s, he spent six weeks touring Nigeria with Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, and in 1980, the album "Music of Many Colors" was released in Nigeria, featuring songs by Ayers' band on one side and Africa '70 on the other. Roy then released the albums "Silver Vibrations" (1983), "Drivin' On Up" (1983), "In the Dark" (1984), "You Might Be Surprised" (1985), "I'm the One (For Your Love Tonight)" (1987), and "Wake Up" (1989), and he performed on the 1988 Whitney Houston single "Love Will Save The Day." In 1994, he was featured on the charity album "Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool," which was put out by the Red Hot Organization to raise money for the fight against AIDS. "Time" magazine named it "Album of the Year." Ayers released the album "Nasté" in 1995, followed "Perfection" in 2000 and "Mahogany Vibe" and "Virgin Ubiquity: Unreleased recordings 1976–1981" in 2004. In 2015, he performed on Tyler, The Creator's song "Find Your Wings." Roy also launched two record labels, Gold Mink Records and Uno Melodic.
Personal Life
Roy has been married to his wife, Argerie, since 1973, and he is the father of Lauren Faith, Roy Ayers III, Nabil Ayers, and Ayana Ayers. Nabil published the memoir "My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family" in 2022, and according to a 2020 "Los Angeles Times" article, Ayana is Roy's manager. Ayers wrote the song "Holiday" when civil rights activists were working to have the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday recognized as a holiday and several musicians were trying to raise awareness. He told "Creative Loafing" in 2017, "I had so much respect for what Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King had done for the country and civil rights, that when Stevie Wonder called I was really happy to get involved." He added, "We knew that the criticism was coming. We didn't care because we knew we were doing the right thing. I come from a family of educators so it was natural to be a part of a campaign that helped inspire people and bring people closer together."
Awards and Honors
In 2011, Ayers was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights organization that "has fought for the rights and interests of minorities and the impoverished for more than 60 years." A documentary called "Roy Ayers Connection" (formerly known as "The Roy Ayers Project") has been in development since 2010. In a May 2022 update on the project, the filmmaker stated, "The goal of the 'Roy Ayers Project' has always been to create a documentary on Roy Ayers, but it took me 10 years to realize that the mission of the 'Roy Ayers Project' was not about a documentary. The goal was to make a documentary, but it the mission was to celebrate the life and legacy of Roy Ayers." The @royayersconnection Instagram account describes it as "a multimedia project highlighting the life and legacy of jazz legend Roy Ayers and all that is connected to him."
