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A Vampi Soul reissue LP of Roy Ayers Ubiquity's 1976 jazz-funk classic Everybody Loves The Sunshine, with the title track sampled nearly 200 times.
The 1976 Polydor album, back on LP as a 2025 Vampi Soul reissue. The title track has been sampled nearly 200 times (Tupac, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre) and covered by D'Angelo, and the album went Top 10 on the R&B chart.
Roy Ayers got his first pair of vibraphone mallets at age five from Lionel Hampton himself, after the great man spotted him dancing at one of his concerts in Los Angeles, which is about as good an origin story as jazz has to offer. By 1976 Ayers was leading Roy Ayers Ubiquity, a band that blurred funk, soul, jazz and some gorgeous haze of their own, and Everybody Loves The Sunshine, recorded at Electric Lady in New York and Larrabee in West Hollywood, was the record where all of it came together.
The title track is the one, of course: a slow, sun-warped shimmer of vibes and voices that's been sampled nearly 200 times, by Tupac, Mary J. Blige and Dr. Dre among many others, covered by D'Angelo and Robert Glasper, and ranked No. 72 on Pitchfork's list of the best songs of the 1970s. But the album rewards the full spin, from "Hey Uh, What You Say Come On" to "The Golden Rod" and "It Ain't Your Sign, It's Your Mind," with Chicas (Debbie Darby) on vocals throughout. It reached No. 10 on the R&B albums chart, and Erykah Badu later called Ayers the king of neo-soul. We said goodbye to Roy in 2025, at 84. Put this LP on the next warm afternoon and you'll understand why so many people keep coming back to it.
On Vampi Soul (cat# VAMPI 320), a reissue of the 1976 album.
