Roy Ayers - You Might Be Surprised (bonus Tracks Edition) (CD) - CD

Details: Digitally remastered and expanded edition including six bonus tracks. 1985 album from the jazz great. Ayers was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in a musical family. At the age of five, Lionel Hampton gave him his first pair of mallets, which led to the vibraphone being his trademark sound for decades. The area of Los Angeles that Ayers grew up in, now known as South Central, but then known as South Park, was the epicenter of the Southern California Black Music Scene. The schools Roy attended (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School) were all close to the famed Central Avenue, Los Angeles' equivalent of Harlem's Lenox Avenue and Chicago's State Street. Roy would likely have been exposed to music as it not only emanated from the many nightclubs and bars in the area, but also poured out of many of the homes where the musicians who kept the scene alive lived in and around Central. His high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, from which Ayers graduated, produced some of the most talented new musicians, such as Dexter Gordon.