Victor Wooten

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Victor Wooten
Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.
Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.
Background information
Born September 11, 1964 (age 42)
Origin Hampton, Virginia, USA
Genre(s) Funk, Jazz, Fusion, Progressive, Bluegrass
Occupation(s) Bassist, Composer, Singer, Songwriter, Bandleader, Record producer
Instrument(s) Bass guitar, Double bass
Years active 1970 - present
Website www.victorwooten.com

Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964 in Hampton, Virginia) is an American electric bass guitar player. He is widely regarded among his musical peers as both a technical virtuoso on the bass guitar as well as a skilled musician and composer. Wooten has won the "Bass Player of the Year" award from Bass Player Magazine three times in a row, and was the first person to win the award more than once.[1]

Contents

[edit] Life

The youngest of five brothers, he was taught by his older brother Regi to play bass at age three, and by age five Victor could hold simple bass lines and play gigs. The Wooten Brothers band (Regi, Rudy, Roy, Joseph and Victor) played for many years in the 1970s around Williamsburg, Virginia as well as opening up for Curtis Mayfield and War. Victor also played bass in the country show at Busch Gardens before moving to Nashville. While in Virginia, Victor met his longtime wife, Holly.

After moving to Nashville, Tennessee in 1988 Victor was immediately recruited by blues and soul singer Jonell Mosser. A year later he was hired by banjo maestro Béla Fleck, along with keyboardist and harmonica player Howard Levy and Victor's brother Roy Wooten (a.k.a. Future Man). Their group, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, became famous first by playing a mixture of jazz, funk, and bluegrass, then later becoming one of the most stylistically free-swinging bands of the modern era. (Levy eventually left the group and was replaced by saxophonist and horn player Jeff Coffin.)

Wooten has been a member of several fusion and progressive supergroups, including Bass Extremes (with Steve Bailey, Derico Watson and Oteil Burbridge), the Vital Tech Tones (with Scott Henderson and Steve Smith), the indian jazz fusion band PRASANNA, and the "Extraction" trio (with Greg Howe and Dennis Chambers). He recorded with renowned Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster on her 2003 album Blueprint. Victor has also been on tour with many other bands including the Dave Matthews Band.

Victor currently tours with his solo group, and still with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He resides near Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and four children.

[edit] Techniques

The evolution of a higher standard in electric bass guitar construction methods, such as a lower action (the distance from the string to the fretboard measured at the 12 fret) more akin to that of a six-string electric guitar, allowed Wooten to develop many new fingering techniques that were essentially undiscovered before his time. As a child, his older brother Regi Wooten helped Victor develop his double-thumbing technique as a way to more accurately reproduce the basslines of such greats as Larry Graham. This technique, which has been independently utilized by other bassists (notably Marcus Miller, and Larry Graham too in "Release Yourself", 1974) uses the thumb to strike both downwards and upwards on a string in a manner similar to a guitar pick. Victor is also famous for his Stanley Jordan-like two-handed tapping and trademark open-hammer-pluck technique.

[edit] Instruments

Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.
Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.

Wooten is most often seen playing Fodera basses, of which he has a signature model.[2] His most famous Fodera, a 1983 Monarch Deluxe which he refers to as "number 1", sports a Kahler Tremolo System model 2400 bridge. Fodera's "Yin Yang" basses (designed/created for Wooten) incorporate the Yin Yang symbol - which Wooten often uses in various media - as a main focal point of the top's design and construction. It is often mistakenly thought that the Yin Yang symbol is painted onto the bass, but in reality, the symbol is created from two pieces of naturally finished wood (Ebony and Holly, for example), seamlessly fitted together to create the Yin-Yang pattern.[3]

Though Wooten's beautiful and impressive basses receive much attention, his most frequent and consistent response when asked by his fans about which bass is best, etc. ..., is that "the bass makes no music ... you do".[citation needed] He'll often go on to state that the most important features to look for in a bass are comfort and playability. During a question and answer session at a 1998 concert, Wooten stated that "If you take a newborn baby and put them on the instrument, they're going to get sounds out of it that I can't get out of it, so we're all the best."[4] This philosophy seems closely related to another fundamental truth about Wooten's stated approach to and experience of bass and music in general, which is that music is a language. According to Wooten, when speaking or listening we don't focus on the mouth as it is forming words; similarly, when a musician is playing or performing the focus shouldn't be on the instrument.

[edit] Discography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Elig, Jenny. "Famous bass player to visit the Swindlefish tonight", The Post (Online Edition), 1999-10-11. Retrieved on December 25, 2006.
  2. ^ Fodera Guitars "Victor Wooten '83 Classic", Fodera Guitars website, Retrieved on January 10, 2007.
  3. ^ Fodera Guitars "Victor Wooten Yin-Yang 4 String", Fodera Guitars website, Retrieved on January 10, 2007.
  4. ^ Victor Wooten. (1999). 'Victor Wooten Live at Bass Day 1998' [VHS]. Hudson Music.

[edit] External links

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Béla Fleck • Victor Wooten • Future Man • Jeff Coffin
Howard Levy
Discography
Studio releases: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones • Flight of the Cosmic Hippo • UFO Tofu • Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest • Left of Cool • Greatest Hits of the 20th Century • Outbound • Little Worlds • The Hidden Land
Live releases: Live Art • Live at the Quick
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