Aubrey Lyles

Aubrey Lee Lyles (8 January 1884 – 28 July 1932), sometimes credited as A. L. Lyles, was an American vaudeville performer, playwright, songwriter, and lyricist. He appeared with Flournoy E. Miller as Miller and Lyles as a popular African-American comedy duo from 1905 until shortly before his death. in 1929 they appeared on film as grocers in the Vitaphone Varieties short comedy film They Know Their Groceries.

Biography Lyles was born in Jackson, Tennessee, and attended Fisk University in Nashville as a medical student. He began performing as one half of a comedy duo, Miller and Lyles, with his friend Flournoy Miller. From 1905, Miller and Lyles were hired by impresario Robert T. Motts to be resident playwrights with the Pekin Theater Stock Company in Chicago. They performed with the company in blackface, and in the show The Colored Aristocrats introduced the characters Steve Jenkins (Miller) and Sam Peck (Lyles), with which they would be associated for many years.

In 1909, Miller and Lyles traveled to New York City, where they started to perform on the vaudeville circuit, uniquely relying on comic performances rather than incorporating song and dance. They developed comedy devices later copied by others, such as a prizefighting routine which contrasted Miller's height and Lyles' short stature; completing each other's sentences; and "mutilatin'" the language in their phraseology. In 1915, they appeared in André Charlot's production Charlot's Revue in England, They split up the act in 1928 but later reunited to perform on radio, and threatened to sue Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, writers and performers of the Amos 'n' Andy radio show, for plagiarising their act. They also started to put together a new show, Shuffle Along of 1933.

Lyles died in New York City in July 1932 of pulmonary tuberculosis, at the age of 48.

Filmography They Know Their Groceries (1929), Vitaphone Varieties short starring F. E. Miller an Aubrey Lyles as grocers. Bryan Foy directed