One of my favourite acid jazz songs is ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’. As a beginner to acid jazz in my university days, I listened to compilation CDs and thought the song was written by The Quiet Boys, until I heard a new, jazzier rendition of it on our local radio station Lush 99.5.
I then checked iTunes and found umpteen different variations of the song – mostly attributed to Roy Ayers. Then I realised that the song was originally Ayers’. Later on I discovered that his other songs were sampled by Tupac, 50 Cent A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy and Jill Scott, and covered by class acts like Incognito and even my favourite soulsta mamma Erykah Badu.
I am a great fan of black music, and many of these bands are easily in my shortlist as well. So I had to find out more about this man who inspired other great musicians to relive his music with today’s generation. However, Ayers’ albums are not easy to find in Singapore. There was one album selling at Borders at Import price. I eventually picked up a remastered collection at That CD Shop, and am seriously thinking of checking out his other albums proper… somehow.
You can listen to a remix of the song on his [MySpace page](http://www.royayers.com/). The song was also featured in Grand Theft Auto and has [its own Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Loves_the_Sunshine).
Everybody loves the sunshine; everybody loves Roy.