A flexible pianist and keyboardist, Bobby Lyle has long straddled the boundaries between straightahead and more commercial forms of jazz. He grew up in Minneapolis and at age six took piano lessons from his mother who was a church organist. Lyle played clarinet for a period in junior high school before switching back to piano. He considers Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner and Art Tatum to have been his early influences. Lyle's first gig was when he was 16 and, after two years of college, in 1964 he became a fulltime musician.