Arthur Lyman
Encyclopedia
Arthur Lyman was an American
jazz
vibraphone
and marimba
player. His group popularized a style of faux-Polynesia
n music during the 1950s and 1960s which later became known as exotica
. His albums became favorite stereo-effect
demonstration discs during the early days of the stereophonic LP album
for their elaborate and colorful percussion, deep bass and 3-dimensional recording soundstage. Lyman was known as "the King of Lounge music
."
, a section of Honolulu. Arthur's father was very strict with him, each day after school locking him in a room with orders to play along to a stack of Benny Goodman
records "to learn what good music is." "I had a little toy marimba," Lyman later recalled, "a sort of bass xylophone
, and from those old 78 rpm disks
I learned every note Lionel Hampton
recorded with the Goodman group." He became adept at the 4-mallet style of playing which offers a greater range of chord-forming options. He became good enough to turn professional at age 14 when he joined a group called the Gadabouts, playing vibes in the cool-jazz style then in vogue. "I was working at Leroy's, a little nightclub down by Kakaako
. I was making about $60 a week, working Monday to Saturday, from 9 to 2 in the morning, and then I'd go to school. So it was kind of tough."
The character Lyman Zerga, played by Carl Reiner, is most likely named after composer/musician Arthur Lyman. Track 7 of Music from the Motion Picture Ocean’s Eleven (by David Holmes) is called “Lyman Zerga.” Track 8 is “Caravan” by Arthur Lyman, which is very much the jazz exotica style and sound of David Holmes’ music on the rest of the soundtrack.
in 1951, he put music on hold to work as a desk clerk at the Halekulani hotel
. It was there in 1954 that he met pianist Martin Denny
, who, after hearing him play, offered the 21-year old a spot in his band. Initially wary, Lyman was persuaded by the numbers: he was making $280 a month as a clerk, and Denny promised more than $100 a week. Denny had been brought to Hawaii in January on contract by Don the Beachcomber
, and stayed in Hawaii to play nightly in the Shell Bar at the Hawaiian Village
. Other members of his band were Augie Colon on percussion and John Kramer on string bass. Denny, who had traveled widely, had collected numerous exotic instruments from all over the world and liked to use them to spice up his jazz arrangements of popular songs. The stage of the Shell Bar was very exotic, with a little pool of water right outside the bandstand, and rocks and palm trees growing around. One night Lyman had had "a little to drink," and when they began playing the theme from Vera Cruz
, Lyman tried a few bird calls. "The next thing you know, the audience started to answer me back with all kinds of weird cries. It was great." These bird calls became a trademark of Lyman's sound.
When Denny's "Quiet Village" was released on record in 1957 it became a smash hit, igniting a national mania for all things Hawaiian, including tiki
idols, exotic drinks, aloha shirt
s, luaus, straw hats and Polynesian-themed restaurants like Trader Vic's.
That same year, Lyman split off from Denny to form his own group, continuing in much the same style but even more flamboyant. For the rest of their careers they remained friendly rivals, even appearing together (with many of their former bandmates) on Denny's 1990 CD Exotica '90. Although the Polynesian craze faded as music trends changed, Lyman's combo continued to play to tourists nearly every Friday and Saturday night at the New Otani
Kaimana Beach Hotel in Honolulu throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He also performed for years at Don the Beachcomber's Polynesian Village, The Shell Bar, the Waialae Country Club
and the Canoe House at the Ilikai Hotel
at Waikiki, the Bali Hai in Southern California and at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. During the peak of his popularity Lyman recorded more than 30 albums and almost 400 singles, earning three gold albums. Taboo peaked at number 6 on Billboard
s album chart
and stayed on the chart for over a year, eventually selling more than two million copies. The title song peaked at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100
in July 1959. Lyman's biggest pop single was "Yellow Bird," originally a Haiti
an song, which peaked at #4 in July 1961. His last charting single was "Love For Sale" (reaching number 43 in March 1963), but his music enjoyed a new burst of popularity in the 1990s with the lounge music
revival and CD reissues.
Lyman died from thoracic cancer
in February 2002.
1965 to 1966
1966 to 1975
1975 to 1978
geodesic dome
auditorium on the grounds of the Kaiser Hawaiian Village
Hotel on Waikiki
in Honolulu. This space provided unparalleled acoustics and a natural 3-second reverberation. His recordings also benefited from being recorded on a one-of-kind Ampex 3-track 1/2" tape recorder designed and built by engineer Richard Vaughn. All of Lyman's albums were recorded live, without overdubbing. He recorded after midnight, to avoid the sounds of traffic and tourists, and occasionally you can hear the aluminum dome creaking as it settles in the cool night air. The quality of these recordings became even more evident with the advent of CD reissues, when the digital mastering engineer found he didn't have to do anything to them but transfer the original 3-track stereo masters to digital. The recordings remain state-of-the-art nearly 50 years later.
CD Reissues
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
vibraphone
Vibraphone
The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
and marimba
Marimba
The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
player. His group popularized a style of faux-Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
n music during the 1950s and 1960s which later became known as exotica
Exotica
Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same title, popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s, typically with the suburban set who came of age during World War II. The musical colloquialism, exotica, means tropical ersatz: the non-native, pseudo experience of Oceania...
. His albums became favorite stereo-effect
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
demonstration discs during the early days of the stereophonic LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
for their elaborate and colorful percussion, deep bass and 3-dimensional recording soundstage. Lyman was known as "the King of Lounge music
Lounge music
Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a type of mood music meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place — a jungle, an island paradise, outer space, et cetera — other than where they are listening to it...
."
Biography
Arthur Lyman was born on the island of Kauai in the U.S. territory of Hawaii, on 2 February 1934. He was the youngest of eight children of a Hawaiian mother and a father of Hawaiian, French, Belgian and Chinese extraction. When Arthur's father, a land surveyor, lost his eyesight in an accident on Kauai, the family moved to the island of Oahu and settled in MakikiMakiki
Makiki is an area of Honolulu, Hawaii located northeast of downtown Honolulu generally stretching east to west from Punahou Street to Pensacola Street and north to south from Round Top Drive/Makiki Heights Drive to Lunalilo Freeway. Punchbowl, an extinct tuff cone, and Tantalus, tower over the...
, a section of Honolulu. Arthur's father was very strict with him, each day after school locking him in a room with orders to play along to a stack of Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
records "to learn what good music is." "I had a little toy marimba," Lyman later recalled, "a sort of bass xylophone
Xylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
, and from those old 78 rpm disks
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
I learned every note Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
recorded with the Goodman group." He became adept at the 4-mallet style of playing which offers a greater range of chord-forming options. He became good enough to turn professional at age 14 when he joined a group called the Gadabouts, playing vibes in the cool-jazz style then in vogue. "I was working at Leroy's, a little nightclub down by Kakaako
Kakaako
Kakaako is the name of a commercial and retail district of Honolulu, Hawaii between Ala Moana near Waikīkī to the east, downtown Honolulu and Honolulu Harbor to the west. Kakaako is situated along the southern shores of the island of Oahu....
. I was making about $60 a week, working Monday to Saturday, from 9 to 2 in the morning, and then I'd go to school. So it was kind of tough."
The character Lyman Zerga, played by Carl Reiner, is most likely named after composer/musician Arthur Lyman. Track 7 of Music from the Motion Picture Ocean’s Eleven (by David Holmes) is called “Lyman Zerga.” Track 8 is “Caravan” by Arthur Lyman, which is very much the jazz exotica style and sound of David Holmes’ music on the rest of the soundtrack.
Exotica music
After graduating from McKinley High SchoolPresident William McKinley High School
President William McKinley High School, more commonly referred to as McKinley High School, is a public, co-educational college preparatory high school of the Hawaii State Department of Education and serves grades nine through twelve...
in 1951, he put music on hold to work as a desk clerk at the Halekulani hotel
Halekulani hotel
Halekulani is a U.S. luxury hotel located on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. It has 453 rooms in five buildings on of property. Halekulani is a Hawaiian word meaning "House Befitting Heaven"....
. It was there in 1954 that he met pianist Martin Denny
Martin Denny
Martin Denny was an American piano-player and composer best known as the "father of exotica." In a long career that saw him performing well into his 80s, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and...
, who, after hearing him play, offered the 21-year old a spot in his band. Initially wary, Lyman was persuaded by the numbers: he was making $280 a month as a clerk, and Denny promised more than $100 a week. Denny had been brought to Hawaii in January on contract by Don the Beachcomber
Don the Beachcomber
Donn Beach , born Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, is the founding father of tiki restaurants, bars and nightclubs. The many so-called "Polynesian" restaurants and pubs that enjoyed great popularity are directly descended from what he created...
, and stayed in Hawaii to play nightly in the Shell Bar at the Hawaiian Village
Hilton Hawaiian Village
The Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa, formerly the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel, has been a popular hotel in the Waikiki area of the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States since 1957. It is the largest hotel of the Hilton chain, with 3,386 rooms and with 7 towers...
. Other members of his band were Augie Colon on percussion and John Kramer on string bass. Denny, who had traveled widely, had collected numerous exotic instruments from all over the world and liked to use them to spice up his jazz arrangements of popular songs. The stage of the Shell Bar was very exotic, with a little pool of water right outside the bandstand, and rocks and palm trees growing around. One night Lyman had had "a little to drink," and when they began playing the theme from Vera Cruz
Vera Cruz (film)
Vera Cruz is a 1954 American Technicolor Western starring Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, and featuring Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel, and Cesar Romero. The movie was directed by Robert Aldrich from a story by Borden Chase...
, Lyman tried a few bird calls. "The next thing you know, the audience started to answer me back with all kinds of weird cries. It was great." These bird calls became a trademark of Lyman's sound.
When Denny's "Quiet Village" was released on record in 1957 it became a smash hit, igniting a national mania for all things Hawaiian, including tiki
Tiki
Tiki refers to large wood and stone carvings of humanoid forms in Central Eastern Polynesian cultures of the Pacific Ocean. The term is also used in Māori mythology where Tiki is the first man, created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne. He found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond – she seduced him...
idols, exotic drinks, aloha shirt
Aloha shirt
The Aloha shirt commonly referred to as a Hawaiian shirt is a style of dress shirt originating in Hawaii. It is currently the premier textile export of the Hawaii manufacturing industry. The shirts are printed, mostly short-sleeved, and collared. They usually have buttons, sometimes as a complete...
s, luaus, straw hats and Polynesian-themed restaurants like Trader Vic's.
That same year, Lyman split off from Denny to form his own group, continuing in much the same style but even more flamboyant. For the rest of their careers they remained friendly rivals, even appearing together (with many of their former bandmates) on Denny's 1990 CD Exotica '90. Although the Polynesian craze faded as music trends changed, Lyman's combo continued to play to tourists nearly every Friday and Saturday night at the New Otani
New Otani
is a chain of hotels whose headquarters is in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan.The company opened on January 18, 1963. The main hotel in Tokyo opened in 1964, to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics of that year. Upon its opening, the building was the tallest building in Tokyo until 1968 when the Kasumigaseki...
Kaimana Beach Hotel in Honolulu throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He also performed for years at Don the Beachcomber's Polynesian Village, The Shell Bar, the Waialae Country Club
Waialae Country Club
Waialae Country Club is a private country club in Honolulu, Hawaii.Founded in 1927 and designed by Seth Raynor, it features a 7,125 yard 18-hole course. It annually hosts the Sony Open in Hawaii, though the event has had several corporate sponsors...
and the Canoe House at the Ilikai Hotel
The Ilikai
The Ilikai is a landmark oceanfront high rise hotel and condominium at the western end of Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawai'i. When it opened in 1964, the Ilikai was the first luxury high rise hotel in Hawai'i....
at Waikiki, the Bali Hai in Southern California and at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. During the peak of his popularity Lyman recorded more than 30 albums and almost 400 singles, earning three gold albums. Taboo peaked at number 6 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
s album chart
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
and stayed on the chart for over a year, eventually selling more than two million copies. The title song peaked at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
in July 1959. Lyman's biggest pop single was "Yellow Bird," originally a Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an song, which peaked at #4 in July 1961. His last charting single was "Love For Sale" (reaching number 43 in March 1963), but his music enjoyed a new burst of popularity in the 1990s with the lounge music
Lounge music
Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a type of mood music meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place — a jungle, an island paradise, outer space, et cetera — other than where they are listening to it...
revival and CD reissues.
Lyman died from thoracic cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in February 2002.
Arthur Lyman Group personnel
1957 to 1965- Arthur Lyman - vibraphoneVibraphoneThe vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
, marimbaMarimbaThe marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
, xylophoneXylophoneThe xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
, bird calls, congaCongaThe conga, or more properly the tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban drum with African antecedents. It is thought to be derived from the Makuta drums or similar drums associated with Afro-Cubans of Central African descent. A person who plays conga is called a conguero...
s, bongosBongo drumBongo or bongos are a Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra and the smaller the macho...
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, percussionPercussion instrumentA percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
(including wind chimes, ankle spurs, timbali, cocktail drums, boobams, ass's jaw, guido, conch shell, tambourine, snare drums, wood block, finger cymbals, cowbells, castanets, samba, Chinese gong and sleigh bells) - Alan Soares - pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, celesteCelestaThe celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, glockenspielGlockenspielA glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, guitar, clavietta, marimba, percussion - John Kramer - string bass, bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, percussion, ukuleleUkuleleThe ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....
, guitar, bird calls, fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, clarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed... - Harold Chang - percussion, marimba, xylophone, bass
1965 to 1966
- Arthur Lyman - vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, bird calls, congas, percussion
- Alan Soares - piano, celeste, glockenspiel, guitar, percussion
- Archie Grant - bass, flute, guitar, ukulele
- Harold Chang - percussion, marimba, xylophone
1966 to 1975
- Arthur Lyman - vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, percussion
- Clem Low - piano
- Archie Grant - bass
- Harold Chang - percussion, marimba, xylophone
- Kapiolani Lyman - percussion, marimba, flute, hula, vocals
- Kaipualani - percussion, hula, vocals
1975 to 1978
- Arthur Lyman - vibraphone, marimba, ukulele, percussion
- Paul Reid - piano
- Randy Aton - bass
- Pat Sombrio - drums
- Kapiolani Lyman - percussion, marimba, flute, hula, vocals
- Neil Norman - guest guitarist
Recording details
Most of Lyman's albums were recorded in the aluminum KaiserHenry J. Kaiser
Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyard which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care...
geodesic dome
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
auditorium on the grounds of the Kaiser Hawaiian Village
Hilton Hawaiian Village
The Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa, formerly the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel, has been a popular hotel in the Waikiki area of the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States since 1957. It is the largest hotel of the Hilton chain, with 3,386 rooms and with 7 towers...
Hotel on Waikiki
Waikiki
Waikiki is a neighborhood of Honolulu, in the City and County of Honolulu, on the south shore of the island of Oahu, in Hawaii. Waikiki Beach is the shoreline fronting Waikīkī....
in Honolulu. This space provided unparalleled acoustics and a natural 3-second reverberation. His recordings also benefited from being recorded on a one-of-kind Ampex 3-track 1/2" tape recorder designed and built by engineer Richard Vaughn. All of Lyman's albums were recorded live, without overdubbing. He recorded after midnight, to avoid the sounds of traffic and tourists, and occasionally you can hear the aluminum dome creaking as it settles in the cool night air. The quality of these recordings became even more evident with the advent of CD reissues, when the digital mastering engineer found he didn't have to do anything to them but transfer the original 3-track stereo masters to digital. The recordings remain state-of-the-art nearly 50 years later.
Discography
Original LPs- Leis of Jazz, Hi-Fi Records SR607, 1957
- Taboo, Hi-Fi Records SR806, 1958
- Hawaiian Sunset, Hi-Fi Records SR817, 1958
- Bwana A, Hi-Fi Records SR808, 1958
- Legend of Pele, Hi-Fi Records SR813, 1958
- Bahia, Hi-Fi Records SR815, 1959
- Arthur Lyman On Broadway, Hi-Fi Records SR818, 1959
- Taboo 2, Hi-Fi Records SR822, 1959
- Percussion Spectacular! (reissued as Yellow Bird), Life Records L-1004, 1960
- The Colorful Percussions of Arthur Lyman, Life Records L-1005, 1962
- Many Moods Of Arthur Lyman, Life Records L-1007, 1962
- I Wish You Love (reissued as Love for Sale), Life Records L-1009, 1963
- Cotton Fields, Life Records L-1010, 1963
- Blowin' in the Wind, Life Records L-1014, 1963
- At the Crescendo, Crescendo GNP 605, 1963
- Paradise (reissued as Pearly Shells), Crescendo GNP 606, 1964
- Cast Your Fate to the Wind, Crescendo GNP 607 (reissue of At the Crescendo), 1965
- Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas), Life Records L-1018, 1964
- Isle Of Enchantment, Life Records L-1023, 1964
- Call Of The Midnight Sun, Life Records L-1024, 1965
- Hawaiian Sunset Vol. II, Life Records L-1025, 1965
- Polynesia, Life Records L-1027, 1965
- Arthur Lyman's Greatest Hits, Life Records SL-1030, 1965 (compilation)
- Lyman '66, Life Records SL-1031, 1966
- The Shadow of Your Smile, Life Records SL-1033, 1966
- Aloha, Amigo, Life Records SL-1034, 1966
- Ilikai, Life Records SL-1035, 1967
- At The Port of Los Angeles, Life Records SL-1036, 1967
- Latitude 20, Life Records SL-1037, 1968
- Aphrodisia, Life Records SL-1038, 1968
- The Winners Circle, Life Records SL-1039, 1968
- Today's Greatest Hits, Life Records SL-1040, 1968
- Puka Shells, Crescendo GNPS-2091, 1975
- Authentic Hawaiian Favorites, Olympic Records 6161, 1979 (compilation)
- Song of the Islands, Piccadilly ASI 5436, 1980 (compilation)
CD Reissues
- Music of Hawaii, Legacy/DNA CD 323, 1990 (compilation)
- Taboo: The Exotic Sounds of the Arthur Lyman Group, DCC Compact Classics CD DJZ-613, 1991 (compilation)
- Pearly Shells, GNP-Crescendo CD GNPD 606, 1993 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- The Exotic Sounds Of Arthur Lyman, Legacy/DNA CD 417 (reissue of "Taboo" and "Yellow Bird"), 1996
- Music for a Bachelor's Den, Vol. 5: The Best of the Arthur Lyman Group, DCC Compact Classics CD DZS 095, 1996 (compilation)
- Music for a Bachelor's Den, Vol. 6: More of the Best of the Arthur Lyman Group, DCC Compact Classics CD DZS 096, 1996 (compilation)
- Sonic Sixties, Ryko TCD 1031 CD, 1996 (compilation)
- With a Christmas Vibe, Ryko CD 50363 (reissue of Mele Kalikimaka), 1996
- Taboo, Ryko CD 50364, 1996 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- Hawaiian Sunset, Ryko CD 50365, 1996 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- Taboo, Vol.2, Ryko CD 50430, 1998 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- Leis of Jazz, Ryko CD 50431, 1998 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- The Legend of Pele, Ryko CD 50432, 1998 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- Yellow Bird, Ryko CD 50433, 1998 (reissue with bonus tracks)
- The Very Best of Arthur Lyman, Varese Sarabande, 2002 (compilation)
- Music of Hawaii, Arc Music, 2002 (compilation)
- Taboo: The Greatest Hits of Arthur Lyman, Empire Musicwerks, 2004 (compilation)
- Puka Shells, BCI Eclipse, 2005 (reissue)
- The Singles Collection, Acrobat, 2007 (compilation)
- Bwana A / Bahia, Collector's Choice Music CCM8912, 2008
- Arthur Lyman On Broadway / The Colorful Percussions of Arthur Lyman, Collector's Choice Music CCM8922, 2008
- The Many Moods of Arthur Lyman / Love For Sale, Collector's Choice Music CCM8932, 2008
- Cottonfields / Blowin' In The Wind, Collector's Choice Music CCM8942, 2008
- Isle of Enchantment / Polynesia, Collector's Choice Music CCM8952, 2008
- Lyman '66 / The Shadow of Your Smile, Collector's Choice Music CCM8962, 2008
- Ilikai / At The Port of Los Angeles, Collector's Choice Music CCM8972, 2008
- Latitude 20 / Aphrodesia, Collector's Choice Music CCM8982, 2008
- Winner's Circle / Today's Greatest Hits, Collector's Choice Music CCM8992, 2008