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The real Johnny Lytle: Good vibes, bad business

Fortune eluded famous Springfield musician called ‘the greatest vibes player in the world’

<b>SOUL-JAZZ ON THE PLAZA:</b> Springfield jazz icon Johnny Lytle plays outside City Hall in 1989.

Bryan A. Beverly SOUL-JAZZ ON THE PLAZA: Springfield jazz icon Johnny Lytle plays outside City Hall in 1989.

<b>A MEETING OF HOMEGROWN JAZZ GREATS:</b> Springfield native Earle Warren (left) led Count Basie’s sax section in its prime. Springfield native Johnny Lytle (right) was hailed by Lionel Hampton as “the greatest vibes player in the world.” Both are now buried in Ferncliff Cemetery.

A MEETING OF HOMEGROWN JAZZ GREATS: Springfield native Earle Warren (left) led Count Basie’s sax section in its prime. Springfield native Johnny Lytle (right) was hailed by Lionel Hampton as “the greatest vibes player in the world.” Both are now buried in Ferncliff Cemetery.

ENLARGE PHOTO

<b>LITTLE HAMP:</b> Like his hero, Lionel Hampton, before him, Springfield's Johnny Lytle started out as a drummer. Hamp later gave

LITTLE HAMP: Like his hero, Lionel Hampton, before him, Springfield's Johnny Lytle started out as a drummer. Hamp later gave "Little Hamp," as Lytle was called, his first set of mallets. In 1995, Hampton sent flowers to Lytle's funeral.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 1:43 PM Tuesday, October 27, 2009

When Johnny Lytle came home from playing Redd Foxx’s club in Los Angeles sometime in the 1970s, it wasn’t surprising that he returned without money.

Nor was it surprising that, in lieu of money, he’d actually accepted five of Foxx’s suits as payment.

No, the surprising part?

“I didn’t know he and Redd Foxx were the same size,” recalled Barbara Lytle, his wife.

In all seriousness, “They were really nice suits,” Barbara Lytle said. “But it don’t buy no bread.”

The late jazz vibraphonist — a Springfield native who lived here all of his life, even as he became world famous — lived to make music, not money.

Barbara Lytle, who turns 77 in December, was OK with that.

She worked as a secretary at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for 36 years so “Dilly” could do what he loved — recording in New York, touring Europe and playing just about anywhere with a stage or enough open floor space for his vibes and a good organ.

“He would play because he just loved playing,” Barbara Lytle said. “We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor, either. I was happy with it.”

But almost 14 years after Lytle died suddenly — and, dare it be said, poetically, just weeks after a hard-fought solo appearance with his hometown symphony orchestra — his family has been left with really nothing more than a city street named in his honor.

And even the reasons for that are becoming just as easily forgotten as why streets were named after cats like Leffel and Burnett.

“Nobody really hears Dad’s music,” said Michelle Hagans, Lytle’s daughter. “That’s the biggest disappointment for me, that nobody really hears it.”

The man

To many, Johnny Lytle will always be Springfield’s single-greatest musical product, a man hailed by Lionel Hampton himself as “the greatest vibes player in the world.”

To others, he’s now just some guy whose name is on a street sign. Thankfully, they at least had the foresight to stick a treble clef on his; if only there was room for a hydraulic turbine on Leffel’s sign.

A Johnny Lytle Foundation, created after his 1995 death with the idea of giving out scholarships to local kids, never got the funding it needed to even get off the ground.

And so Johnny Lytle remains a role model for what — and what not — to do with a national recording career.

“He trusted people,” Barbara Lytle said. “That was his problem.”

He didn’t have a lawyer, she said, and insisted instead on handling his own business.

“My husband never had anything in writing,” Barbara Lytle said. “He wasn’t a man who took care of his business. If you’d tell him he had to cut a record, he’d be there. But he wasn’t a man of business, and that’s what hurt him.”

After leaving in 2006 the house she and Johnny called home on what’s now Johnny Lytle Avenue because she could no longer get up and down the stairs, Barbara Lytle has lived in three rentals in as many years.

Living with Michelle and her husband, Samuel Hagans, their three children, their eldest child’s child and a rambunctious boxer dog, to boot, this is what Johnny Lytle left behind.

Both Hagans are out of work.

They’ll probably be leaving for a fourth place soon, according to Samuel, because the roof leaks.

What money the family does receive from Johnny Lytle’s music — typically just an annual check from BMI for $400 or $500 from radio play in such faraway places as Finland and Greece — Barbara Lytle uses to pay bills.

The family has never seen any royalties from album sales.

That is, from what few of his are still in print.

Of more than 30 albums, just a half-dozen are available legitimately, including “The Village Caller,” a 1963 session produced by the legendary Orrin Keepnews that boasted the snappy, soulful title cut — the jazz answer to Booker T’s “Green Onions.”

Someone at BMI, which licenses music for broadcast, once told the family they’d need to hire a music attorney to sniff out album royalties, Michelle Hagans said.

“Mom should be entitled to that,” she said.

But the actual hiring of an attorney is the problem.

“It costs $2,000 just to talk to him,” Barbara Lytle said.

A call to the Concord Music Group — parent company of Lytle’s Milestone, Riverside and Jazzland labels — seeking comment about royalties wasn’t returned.

The music

It all seems like a bum deal for the family of a guy who once ranked in Playboy’s famed jazz poll and whose albums always picked up four stars (or more) in the pages of Down Beat.

But Johnny Lytle made music during a different time.

“Back in them days,” Barbara Lytle said, “bands didn’t get paid what they get paid now.”

For what Lytle often made for live dates, “people nowadays wouldn’t even accept that,” said Barbara Lytle, who married Johnny in 1952.

Had she not worked herself all those years, she said, things at home would’ve been tight.

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I remember when Mr. Lytle came to our school to play as well. He was magic! You could tell he loved what he did.

Mia
7:29 AM, 11/13/2009

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I grew up with Johnny Lytle he was a friend of mine. I ran a barber shop for nearly 50 years.
Johnny was a regular there, we solved the world's problems.
Johnny loved Springfield. He gave a free concert every year. Johnny is buried in an unmarked grave. I'm sure that Mrs. Barbara Lytle would be happy to receive any assistance in helping to mark the grave.

Madell Oats Warfield
10:00 AM, 10/23/2009

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While stationed in the Azores Islands with a Navy detachment in 1969-70, Johnny made an appearance at the NCO club with the USO tour. It was great to hear and see a hometown musician while away from home! Another friend from Springfield was also stationed there and we had a nice talk with Johnny after the show. He really started me on a life long love of jazz. He does have a legacy!

John Strong
9:27 AM, 10/23/2009

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I ve known Johnny Lytle since I was a Litle girl and he was our neighbor and I Only Have this to say
He always had a smile on his face and he loved his music. My dad worked on his car and we grew up with his son and our family was close with his sister Mrs.Lela Hall and I grew up with his sister Vickie
My mother and father thoght a lot of him and his wife Barbara He was very down to earth
He was one of the best muscians around
He and Jimmy Foster

Beverly Jackson
1:33 AM, 10/23/2009

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In about 1973 or 74, while I was a student at Roosevelt, the principal made an announcement that there would be a special assembly in the auditorium. It turned out to be a surprise concert by Mr Lytle. He was fantastic, and the kids loved it! It was the only time I got to hear him live. He was really something.

Karpis
11:23 PM, 10/22/2009

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