Legendary vibraphonist, producer, and vocalist Roy Ayers has passed away at 84 years of age. Ayers would enjoy success in the 70s and 80s as a solo artist, and with his band Ubiquity.

His recordings provided the soundbed for hits by ATCQ, Mary J. Blige, Brand Nubian and many more.

He helped introduce a funkier strain of the music in the 1970s. He also had an impact on hip-hop: His “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” has been sampled nearly 200 times.

Ayers died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 84.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his son Mtume, who said he died after a long illness.

In addition to being one of the acknowledged masters of the jazz vibraphone, Mr. Ayers was a leader in the movement that added electric instruments, rock and R&B rhythms, and a more soulful feel to jazz. He was also one of the more commercially successful jazz musicians of his generation.

He released nearly four dozen albums, most notably 22 during his

12 years with Polydor Records. Twelve of his Polydor albums spent a collective 149 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 chart. His composition “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” from his 1976 album of the same name, has been sampled nearly 200 times by artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg. The electric piano hook from “Love,” on his first Polydor album, “Ubiquity” — which introduced his group of the same name — was used in Deee-Lite’s 1990 dance hit “Groove Is in the Heart.”

“Roy Ayers is largely responsible for what we deem as ‘neo-soul,’” the producer Adrian Younge, who collaborated with Mr. Ayers and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest in 2020 on the second album in the “Jazz Is Dead” series, which showcases frequently sampled jazz musicians, told Clash magazine. “His sound mixed with cosmic soul-jazz is really what created artists like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. It was just that groove.

In 1970, he formed the Roy Ayers Ubiquity, the band with which he would become a soul-jazz star. The name was suggested by his manager, Myrna Williams — and, he explained in a 2016 interview for the website The HistoryMakers, the choice “was wonderful, because I can tell everybody I can be everywhere at the same time.”

After his contract with Atlantic ended, Mr. Ayers began a long and fruitful partnership with Polydor. He and his band released 11 albums from 1970 to 1977, with such evocative titles as “Change Up the Groove” and “Vibrations.” In addition to using electric instruments and producing grooves more suited to a dance floor than a jazz club, the Roy Ayers Ubiquity included vocals by Mr.Ayers. Some members of the group were featured on Mr. Ayers’s soundtrack for the 1973 blaxploitation film “Coffy,” starring Pam Grier.

While the group was popular and would ultimately prove highly influential, it received a mixed reaction from critics. Reviewing a performance at the Village Vanguard in New York in December 1970, John S. Wilson of The New York Times wrote, “Even though Mr. Ayers gets a hard, heavy tone from his vibraphone, his playing is often buried under the eruptive power of his accompaniment or is absorbed by the very similar sound of the electric piano.”

Mr. Wilson went on to say that the fuzztone attachment Mr. Ayers had added to his vibes “produces a rasping noise, which, in its amplified state, gives one an all too vivid idea of what it might be like to be locked in a closet with a troupe of demented bagpipers.”

A 1995 concert review in Black Radio Exclusive magazine was much kinder, praising him as “a permanent (andunderappreciated) fixture in dance music” and noting his influence on “the acid jazz heads who cop his style, the hip-hop heads who sample his tracks, and dancers who will forever groove on his records.”

Mr. Ayers was the inspiration for the 2022 memoir “My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family,” by the musician and record producer Nabil Ayers, who wrote of growing up as Mr. Ayers’s son even though Mr. Ayers played no role in raising him.

In addition to his sons Mtume and Nabil, Mr. Ayers is survived by his wife, Argerie; a daughter, Ayana Ayers; and a granddaughter.

In the last decades of his career, Mr. Ayers recorded for several different labels while staying loyal to the genre he had helped create. He also made guest appearances on albums by Rick James, Whitney Houston, George Benson, the rapper Guru and others.

R.I.P. Roy Ayers 🕊️🕊️🕊️