After three weeks of hard freeze, of slipping on mutt-stained patches of frost and iced Brooklyn gutters, with December's cigarette butts still suspended in February's frozen amber puddles, the cold snap finally snapped, and thermometers inched above zero degrees. Just to feel the sun cut through the blustery wind promised the approach of spring, and it was then that I relied on vibraphonist Roy Ayers to help soundtrack and celebrate warm weather's imminent return. Best known for "Everybody Loves the Sunshine", Ayers and his vibes are like those same solar rays on your skin; for me, this batch of grooves was a salve for staving off seasonal depression.
Not quite on par with, say, James Brown uncovering hours of tape from his on-the-one prime, the promise of prodigious unreleased songs from the peak of Ayers' powers is reason to take notice nonetheless. Since his 1963 debut, Ayers has worked with everyone from Herbie Mann and Guru to Fela Kuti and Erykah Badu, and his shimmering sound has foreshadowed acid jazz and fueled hip-hop, as well as gracing contemporary R&B.; Though Virgin Ubiquity is billed as a collection of thirteen never-before-released tracks, it's far more than a mere scrap heap of outtakes, as each of its "from the vault" cuts luxuriate on the comfortable musical bed that Ayers mastered from '76 through '81.
Originally of the hard bop school, Ayers embraced the strains of black music coming from the radio, incorporating more R&B; smoothness and disco push into his jazz-based playing. That so-slick sound of joy reverberates through titles like "What's the T?" and "Green and Gold", proving the vibed tinges of his loving funk to be almost ageless. The only suggestion of dating comes from the revolving cast of ladybirds, who imitate the leather-lunged female vocal style of the day, piercing through the brass and bass in the manner of disco-divas like Patti LaBelle and Minnie Riperton. The wailing of both Merry Clayton and Sylvia Cox counteracts the otherwise mellow bump of "Brand New Feeling", as they match the analog sine waves with some dog-whistling of their own. But when both ladies lay off the caterwauling, the vibraslap and horn lines recline like a cat napping in a patch of warm light. More soothing is Carla Vaughn, who would go on to sing with Earth, Wind & Fire. Here, she flutters on suave yet tricky tracks like "Mystic Voyage (Version)" and "Boogie Down" (wherein she urges her lover with the undeniable order "pour yourself on me").
"I Am Your Mind', the final track, is the most driving of the 13 presented here, its hard, snapping bass underpinning the multi-tracked whispers, which are a curious bit of what could only be considered "solipsistic funk." Knowing that the head keeps the body from unleashing the freedom that resides within, Ayers, on this unearthed set, echoes the paradigm of another long-lived head-funker: Free your mind and your ass will follow.
