Friends mourn 'Yellow Bird' Lyman
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Lyman's friends and family prepare to paddle offshore Waikiki to scatter the musician's ashes. Lyman died Feb. 24.
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
It was when the music started, when Pat Silva laid the mallets softly down against the golden keys of the vibraphone, just as Arthur Lyman used to do, and the swooning sounds of "Yellow Bird" swept through the room — that was when the tissues came out, the dark glasses came off, and tears began to fall.
It was a sound so familiar and yet so exotic ... so "Ata."
And just as Arthur "Ata" Lyman used to play their favorite tunes when pals would walk into Don the Beachcomber or the Shell Bar in Hilton Hawaiian Village, so 500 friends and family honored the late master of mood music with his signature song at a memorial yesterday at the Honolulu Elks Club.
Lyman, who was 70, died here Feb. 24 after a battle with cancer.
"King of the Jungle Vibraphone," the New York Times called him yesterday in an obituary, a man who "cawed his way to the top" of Polynesian music with bird calls and chirps in a handful of gold records and more than 30 LPs.
"Prolific ... exotica's best kept secret," said Vinyl Safari, an Internet guide.
"At the top of the exotica pantheon," said another site, SpaceAgePop.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Born on Kaua'i in 1932, Lyman was the youngest son of a janitor and a blind man. His father fostered Lyman's musical career by locking him in a room with a toy xylophone and a bunch of Benny Goodman records and telling him to get all of Lionel Hampton's notes right.
A friend places a lei in front of a picture of musician Arthur H. Lyman at Lyman's funeral yesterday in Waikiki.
Patsy Hawthorne of Waimanalo came, a program with Lyman's picture in her hands, to say goodbye yesterday to the shy boy from McKinley High School who was her first beau when they were 16.
A Sacred Hearts girl who knew her Latin, Hawthorne was touched when he inscribed a photo to her "Amo te."
And whenever she would show up where he was playing, in later years, the vibes would slip magically into "Isa Lei," a farewell song in honor of Patsy's Fijian heritage.
Same thing when Mexican-American Hector Venegas used to show up in the clubs and hear Lyman salute him with "Vera Cruz" or another Mexicano tune.
"I was a waiter at the Shell Bar when I arrived in Hawai'i from Mexico by way of Kansas City," Venegas said yesterday, "and this man who didn't know me from Adam, he made me feel comfortable, like one of the guys.
"I could have worn an aloha shirt today," Venegas said, "but this guy had class, and I put on a coat for him."
Same thing when legendary beach boy Rabbit Kekai would show up with friends when Lyman was playing, in Hawai'i or Vegas. Who but Lyman would know Rabbit's favorite song was Schubert's Serenade?
"I knew him when we were kids. He grew up paddling with us and then would surf with us," Kekai said. "One of the best guys I know, who gave a lot of aloha to us guys. I got a picture of me with him, and I treasure it."
Martin Denny, the musician who hired Lyman out of a hotel clerk job to record the breakthrough "Exotica" and "Quiet Village" with his band, said yesterday Lyman was a superb jazz musician who could imitate Hampton to the note, but sounded more like the softer, subtler George Shearing.
"Could you have imagined you would become an international icon in the hearts of so many people?" Denny asked his friend in a tribute. "You are the true spirit of aloha, and may God speed you to your celestial vibes."
JoAnn Lyman, the musician's widow, helped paddle a canoe for the first time in her life to drop his ashes off shore. Her time with Lyman, she said in tears, was "an incredible journey."
At the moment the ashes tumbled into the waves, pigeon fancier Doug Beter opened a cage door on shore, and 21 yellow birds streaked into the air between the palms.
"Like in the song," Beter said.
"Yellow bird, you can fly away, to the sky away — you more lucky than me."
