When Sid Jacobs first met Wyble, he wept
with amazement and joy at what he witnessed.
“We met at a music store and he was
already elderly and his hands were shak-
ing,” Jacobs says. “But when he started to
play, my God, what came out—it was only
things I had dreamed of. Literally I had
dreamed once of seeing someone impro-
vise counterpoint, and this was a déjà vu
moment and tears came to my eyes. I was
stunned at what I was watching.”
In 1977, Wyble released Jimmy Wyble &
Love Brothers, an album that demonstrated
his increasingly matured and unique sounds
and styling.
“He had 40 years of recordings and at the
very beginning, he was sounding like Charlie
Christian,” says Oakes. “And then when he was
in the studios and doing live television he was
playing whatever anyone wanted him to play.
And then in the ’70s, he started developing his
own style, his own sound, his own thing.”
Jimmy Wyble & Love Brothers features
two etudes, part of a series of musical pieces
that would become the guitar player’s hallmark explorations of contrapuntal concepts
and techniques. Those etudes demonstrated
unbelievable technique, but Wyble was
known to shy away from recognition.
“He just called them ‘noodles,’” remem-
bers Jacobs. “I said, ‘If those are noodles
then you’re Chef Boyardee!’”
The ’70s also saw the original release
of Wyble’s book The Art of Two-Line
Improvisation, which was recently updated
Jimmy Wyble (far left) began learning guitar at age 12 from a machinist at the oil refinery where his
father worked. Photo courtesy of Brandon Bernstein
and re-released in 2001 with edits and
recordings by Oakes. The seminal text melded counterpoint, rhythm, and harmonic concepts based on a sort of mutated major scale
into a new way of teaching the guitar that
sometimes baffled students, but ultimately
opened up new directions in their playing.
“The fingerings can be a bit elusive,” says
Jacobs. “But you realize your hands are in rec-
ognizable shapes. ‘I recognize these chords.’ But
they came at you in two lines so you start to get
a little idea on how you can start improvising
like that, whereas when you first look at it, you
just go, ‘Oh, this looks hard.’ And then when
you try to finger it, one or two notes at a time
without seeing where you’re going with it, you
might get a little confused. But when all the
pieces are pulled together, you realize you’ve
had a great guitar lesson. At the end of it, once
you play them in time, they sound wonderful.”
Picker for Life
Wyble retired from public appearances
and performances in the ’80s to care for
YOUTUBE IT
Experience a smorgasbord of Jimmy Wyble’s undeniable chops—from swinging on the silver screen, to Benny Goodman’s big
band, to mind-blowing, contrapuntal picking in a quaint L.A. tea house.
Performing with Red Norvo
in a scene from the 1958
film Screaming Mimi
directed by Gerd Oswald.
You Tube search term:
Red Norvo Trio 1958
Performing with Benny
Goodman in 1960.
You Tube search term:
Benny Goodman and His
Quartet 1960
Performing a mixture of
his etudes at a Pasadena tea
house in 2007.
You Tube search term:
Jimmy Wyble’s Etudes No. 2
and No. 3
Performing “The Duke” and
other noodles in the same
Pasadena tea house in 2007.
You Tube search term:
Jimmy Wyble 1 – Tea Time
– The Duke
