WHERE PRE-HISTORY AND POP CULTURE MEET

    Jimmy Wyble was a guitarist noted for his contributions to both jazz and Western swing. He played country music in the early 1940s with fellow guitarist Cameron Hill on local Houston radio before joining the Texas Playboys. He served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, and returned to work with Western swing groups into the 1950s.

     In 1953, he released his first record as a bandleader, The Jimmy Wyble Quintet. The album featured accordion, clarinet, guitar, bass, and drums. That same year, he recorded with Barney Kessel. Soon after he played in the bands of Benny Goodman and Red Norvo; he spent eight years touring and recording with Norvo, including a tour of Australia backing Frank Sinatra.

     In the 1960s and 1970s, Wyble played as a session musician and on TV shows such as The Flip Wilson Show and Kraft Music Hall. He studied classical guitar with Laurindo Almeida and became a revered and highly sought-out teacher; among his students were Howard Roberts, Steve Lukather, Howard Alden, Larry Koonse and Smokey Hormel. Wyble played guitar on movie soundtracks, including The Wild Bunch, Ocean's Eleven, Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex", and Kings Go Forth. In the 1970s he also developed a unique and personal two-line contrapuntal approach to guitar, and composed numerous etudes in this style. Many of these pieces were published in various books, including "Classical/Country"(Howard Roberts-Playback 1973), "The Art of Two-Line Improvisation (PMP 1979), and "Concepts for the Classical and Jazz Guitar"(Mel Bay 2000).