Arthur Lyman - Biography

Biography

Arthur Lyman was born on the island of Kauai in the U.S. territory of Hawaii, on 2 February 1934. He was the youngest of eight children of a Hawaiian mother and a father of Hawaiian, French, Belgian and Chinese extraction. When Arthur's father, a land surveyor, lost his eyesight in an accident on Kauai, the family moved to the island of Oahu and settled in Makiki, a section of Honolulu. Arthur's father was very strict with him, each day after school locking him in a room with orders to play along to a stack of Benny Goodman records "to learn what good music is." "I had a little toy marimba," Lyman later recalled, "a sort of bass xylophone, and from those old 78 rpm disks I learned every note Lionel Hampton recorded with the Goodman group." At age 8 he made his public debut playing his toy marimba on the Listerine Amateur Hour on radio station KGMB, Honolulu playing "Twelfth Street Rag." "I won a bottle of Listerine," he laughed. Lyman joined his father and brother playing USO shows on the bases at Kaneohe and Pearl Harbor. Over the next few years he became adept at the 4-mallet style of playing which offers a greater range of chord-forming options. In fact he became good enough to turn professional at age 14 when he joined a group called the Gadabouts, playing vibes in the cool-jazz style then in vogue. "I was working at Leroy's, a little nightclub down by Kakaako. I was making about $60 a week, working Monday to Saturday, from 9 to 2 in the morning, and then I'd go to school. So it was kind of tough."