Everybody loves the sunshine.
Roy Ayers introduction to the vibraphone came in 1946 at a Lionel Hampton concert when he was only six years old. Ayers, later known for hits like “Everybody loves the Sunshine” and “Searching,” was handed a pair of mallets by Hampton, who was then at the height of his powers as a vibist and musician. Ayers wouldn’t start playing the vibes himself for another 11 years, but when he began playing the vibraphone became the centerpiece for his personal sound.
Ayers played a foundational, glue-man role in his band Roy Ayers Ubiquity. A New York Times review of the band from 1970 asserts that Ayers’ vibe sound and that of his pianist were only differentiated by Ayers’ personal choice to attach a fuzz effect to his instrument. This points to the difficulty in pinning down the instrument’s elusive sound.
A vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family that can also play a rhythmic or melodic role within an arrangement. The instrument is named for its prominent vibrato or tremolo sound, produced by the fans spinning in resonator tubes underneath each of its evenly laid aluminum bars.
Vibraphone players can control the speed of these fans with a controller on their instrument. Vibraphones also come equipped with delay pedals, like pianos, and can sustain notes for a very long time — sometimes up to a minute.
Percussive, melodic and rhythmic
The first vibraphone was built on the foundations of a steel marimba, another instrument in the percussion family. The major differences between the two being the marimba’s elevated back row of bars and its lack of resonator tubes and motors. J.C. Deagan, an instrument maker from J.C. Deagan, Inc., improved on this design and created the vibraphone as we know it today. Deagan switched the bars from steel to aluminum, introduced the foot pedal and adjusted the dimensions of the bars to remove dissonant frequencies prevalent in the original design.
Lionel Hampton, popular for his showmanship on the drums, brought the same flare to the vibraphone. He was first discovered by Louis Armstrong in 1930, who encouraged him to pursue the vibes. Though he was not the first to play the instrument, he became a seminal figure for many of the vibists that followed, like Arthur Lyman and Milt Jackson.
When established musician Benny Goodman of the Benny Goodman Orchestra heard Hampton play at the storied Paradise Cafe in Los Angeles he invited him to join his band, turning their trio into a quartet. Goodman’s was one of the first musical groups in the country to be racially integrated.
‘King of the Jungle Vibraphone’
“Arthur Lyman, King of the Jungle Vibraphone,” a 2002 obituary in the New York Times begins, was locked by his father in a room with a toy marimba and Benny Goodman records until he was proficient at playing Lionel Hampton solos. An example of Lionel Hampton’s lasting impact. By 14, Lyman was already playing in jazz clubs in his native Honolulu. He would later become a pioneer in one of the most singular movements in jazz and vibraphone history.
The “steamy, tropical mood” of Arthur Lyman’s Exotica blended “cool jazz” with percussive instruments and jungle noises, according to The New York Times. Cool jazz became popular in the 1940s, its slower tempos and calmer tones in direct contrast to bebop, which was faster and more angular.
On the album “Yellow Bird,” one of Lyman’s contributions to the cool jazz influenced sound of exotica, his vibraphone works hand in hand with other mallet instruments and a guitar. The instruments work together to color a track that pours warmth through its intricate intersections of percussion and melody.
Vibes branching out
Jazz isn’t consumed in the same way that it was in the 1960s and 70s; and even then, closer to the prime of the genre, vibraphones were already on the peripheries of most arrangements. According to a Nielsen report from 2015, jazz accounted for only 1.3% of music consumed that year and in a study from Statista in 2023, only 18% of Americans even claimed to listen to the genre.
Today’s vibists, like Joel Ross of the Joel Ross Quartet are straying slightly from their jazz roots. In an interview with Reverb, Ross explained many of his contemporaries were venturing into alternative, Latin and classical music. Sufjan Stevens, a popular indie singer, lists the vibraphone as one of the many, many, instruments that he plays — a testament primarily to his musicality, but a promising factoid nonetheless for the future of the vibes.
Stevens’ play “Illinoise,” based on his 2005 album “Illinois,” is his latest work to invoke the vibes. In the same interview with Reverb, Joel Ross mentions Joe Locke, a mentor to both him and Stefon Harris, who he credits for “bringing the vibraphone” into the new age. Locke passed on a desire to connect to his mentees they both reference when talking about the vibraphone.
In an interview with NPR Harris explains his goal is to connect first with his bandmates, then welcome his audience to that connection. In the New York Times, Joel Ross explains “mutual listening” is his band’s currency; talking to each other through rhythm. These connections are instrumental to jazz from both on and off the stage — between audience and musician, and from musician to musician.
The vibraphone’s roots in jazz and the deep collaboration within bands that perform in the genre might prove instrumental in finding the instrument a newfound place in a changing musical landscape.
Featured image: Photo by Megs Harrison on Unsplash
Edited by James Sutton & Abbigail Earl
Great article! Keeping the history alive and well!