HUSBAND AND WIFE MAKE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC TOGETHER
By Thelma Heatwole
SUN CITY ~~ Music has been a major refrain in the lives of Clara and Lyle Wiseman. In fact, they struck a harmonious chord when they first met in the early 1930s in a dance hall in Lincoln, Nebraska. Lyle was playing that night in an otherwise all-girl band. He informed Clara if she could play the accordion well enough she could play in his own band. She did. Furthermore, they were married in 1936 and continued making music together or in separate bands.

At ages 77 and 67, they still are making music and entertaining. They have their own band and a separate vaudeville act. They were in Sun City less than a month in 1973 when they made their first performance. The Wisemans call their band, "The Musicians," and describe it as a "two-piece trio" with a ballroom beat. Lyle plays the saxophone and drum at the same time. His wife plays the accordion and sometimes switches to the organ. "Senior age people need to keep busy," she said. "Otherwise they get bored. Retirement isn't what it is cracked up to be. They put you out to pasture and you wilt. People forget you exist."

Their vaudeville act, also called "The Musicians," includes trick (breakaway) violins, song whistles, sundry gadgets, even a music stand that wilts. A program may relate to songs with floral names, musical trips around the United States, or place emphasis on seasons, rhythm and blues or sweetheart songs. Clara is the "straight man" and her husband, the comedian.

He started violin lessons as a teenager in Nebraska when a music school salesman knocked on the door and offered him a violin if they would pay for lessons. Clara was organist at a community church in Glyndon, Minnesota before she went to Lincoln. She was baking pies in a restaurant at the time she met Lyle. Wiseman's music work was an avocation to other livelihood. In 1941, they moved to California when he went to work at Lockheed in Burbank. They soon were playing in bands, learning "foreign" ~ Polish, Ukranian ~ music.

During World War II, the Wisemans performed with the Hollywood USO. Wiseman received a trophy from Battery B, 122nd Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Battalion during the USO series. They became associated in vaudeville acts with Jack Grey, a former RKO stuntman, in the Hollywood Musical Nertz band. When Grey died, his trick violins were willed to Wiseman. After his retirement in 1968, the Wisemans did shows for the Los Angeles Bureau of Music, Parks and Recreation, in hospitals, convalescent homes and for senior citizen groups.

Their kickoff performance in Sun City was at the Sun Valley Lodge. They perform for other area senior citizen groups and the Phoenix Parks and Recreation adult centers. Last December, for instance, they had 24 vaudeville or bank engagements. "It gets us out," she explained. And there is another benefit. "When senior citizens approach you in their wheel chairs after a performance and say 'you have no idea what this means', we feel like we have done something worth while," Mrs. Wiseman said.
Photo and article published in The Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Arizona) on Sunday, November 5, 1978.