Arthur Lyman
Arthur Lyman was a Hawaiian musician who played the vibraphone and marimba
leading a band that helped to popularise the so-called exotica style of music in
the 1950s. It was an easy listening mix of big band jazz and moody Polynesian
themes with a Latin influence and ethnic instruments, bird calls and jungle
noises.
Lyman grew up in Honolulu and learned to play music on a toy marimba as a child
by copying vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. By the time he was a teenager, he had
turned professional in a local jazz club and joined the band headed by Martin
Denny in the Shell Bar of t...
