his ailing wife, Lily, who suffered from
muscular dystrophy and was confined to
a wheelchair. The couple married in 1957
and the guitar player frequently referred to
his beloved as “My Lily.”
“He said to me on many occasions,
‘My time is not my own anymore,’” Oakes
recalls. During Lily’s illness, Wyble typically
refused invitations to go out and see friends.
This self-imposed exile from the music busi-
ness was representative of Wyble’s lifelong
habit of deferring the spotlight and basing
career decisions on the music, as opposed
to ambitions for stardom. That personality
trait is at least one contributing factor to
Wyble’s lack of a sizable profile today.
“He worked with all these greats like
Goodman and Norvo, and he never asked
what a gig paid,” Jacobs says. “He just asked
himself if he wanted to play the music. I
don’t know anybody that can say that.”
“The limelight is not what Jimmy was
in this for,” Koonse concurs. “He was really
in this for looking inside of himself and
unlocking things. Really it was hard to
find a trace of any ego because he was self-
effacing to a fault.”
After his wife’s passing in 2006, the gui-
tarist surprised pals by accepting a few invi-
tations, if only to hang out. Jacobs was per-
forming at a Pasadena-area Thai restaurant
and convinced his teacher to come along
each week. “It got to be our regular Sunday
meeting,” he says. Then Jacobs was invited
to an out-of-town appearance that conflicted
with his regularly scheduled performance.
“I said, ‘Jimmy, while I’m gone, why
don’t you cover the gig for me?’” Jacobs
remembers. “He said he couldn’t play
in front of people. I said, ‘Jimmy, look
around, no one’s listening.’ So with a little
arm-twisting, he agreed and when I came
back, they had offered him his own night,
another night, when he realized how much
fun it was. He said, ‘Give me your slowest
day. If you don’t mind, I’ll sit and play.’
People showed up and, when they met him,
they fell in love with him.”
Friends point to those small performanc-
es by an elderly man in a small restaurant to
a small crowd as perfect representations of
Wyble’s caring and humble spirit.
“At the age of 85, after having not played
in front of the public for 20 years, Jimmy
decides to go out and start playing,” Koonse
says. “People started coming out to these
Photo courtesy of Brandon Bernstein
performances and the amazing thing is that
Jimmy was playing very well. He was a little
embarrassed and shy. But that really stands
out in my memory, the fact that Jimmy did
that and how brave he was. This is a funny
aspect—he would stop playing if a woman
was at the door. He would go open the
door for her and then he’d resume playing.
He was very gentle, you know, had a gentle-
manly demeanor.”
After his return to public performing,
colleagues pushed the teacher to speak at
Musicians Institute. Wyble’s classes and
lectures were packed not only with aspiring
guitar players and students, but even faculty
members of the esteemed institution.
“A student might go into that class, and
there’d be three or four teachers in the class
too,” Oakes says. “The students are looking
around seeing their own teachers—maybe
their single-string teacher or their reading
teacher—studying with Jimmy and learn-
ing from him. And they’re going, ‘Gosh,
this guy must really be something special’
because that just didn’t happen.”
In spite of his accomplishments and skill
on the guitar, he never stopped practicing
and devoting untold hours to the instru-
ment. In fact, in the program for Wyble’s
memorial service, Steve Kinigstein writes
that Wyble stopped performing live after
the short run of gigs in his ’80s because it
“was eating into his practice time.”
As Wyble’s health declined, he spent
time in and out of the hospital. But even in
pain and nearing the end, his spirit affected
the guitar players who admired him.
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