Arthur Lyman, Hawaiian-born vibraphonist who squawked, rattled, thumped and hooted his way to the top of the world of Polynesian mood music in the 1950s and early ’60s, has died at 70.
He had been regularly performing his old hits, including his signature tune, “Yellow Bird,” for tourists in Waikiki until last year.
Mr. Lyman died Feb. 24 of throat cancer, his family said.
His musical realm was exotica, a term taken from the title of a 1959 album by Martin Denny, the genre’s other giant, in whose combo Mr. Lyman had played the vibes.
Exotica style blended cool jazz with primitive percussion instruments, bird calls and other jungle noises to evoke a steamy tropical mood. Mr. Lyman once told an interviewer that he had hit upon his mixture spontaneously, throwing out a few squawks during a performance of the “Vera Cruz” movie theme.
The audience squawked back, and a formula was born.
Many others credit Denny with inventing exotica, although Mr. Lyman pushed it to its limits, in more than 30 albums and in concerts and club appearances around the world.
Mr. Lyman was born on Kauai island, the last of eight children, and grew up in Honolulu.
He once said he learned music through what some might consider a form of child abuse: Each day after school, Mr. Lyman recalled, his father would lock him in his room with a toy marimba and some Benny Goodman records and order him to play along for the rest of the day.
Eventually, he mastered every Lionel Hampton solo and was playing in a jazz club in Honolulu by the age of 14.
