Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten
Wooten playing at the Belly Up in 2006.
Background information
Birth name	Victor Lemonte Wooten
Born	September 11, 1964 (1964-09-11) (age 45) Hampton, Virginia, U.S.
Genres	Funk, jazz, bluegrass, rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer, author
Instruments	Bass, double bass, cello, banjo
Years active	1980 onward
Associated acts	Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Steve Bailey, Vital Tech Tones, SMV, Greg Howe, Dave Matthews Band, Chick Corea Elektric Band
Website	www.victorwooten.com

Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964) is an American bass player, composer and author.

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][dead link]} In addition to a solo career and collaborations with various artists, Wooten has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988.

In 2008, Wooten joined Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller to record an album. The trio of bassists, under the name SMV, released Thunder in August 2008 and began a supporting tour the same month.^[2]

Early life

Born to Dorothy and Pete Wooten, Victor is the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, the other four being Regi, Roy, Rudy Wooten and Joseph Wooten, all of whom are highly regarded musicians. At age three, brother Regi taught Victor to play bass, and by the age of five, Victor was playing in front of crowds with his brothers in their family band, The Wooten Brothers Band.^[3]

Instruments

Wooten playing his Steinberger headless bass guitar at the Belly Up in 2006.

Wooten is most often seen playing Fodera basses, of which he has a signature model.^[4] 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.^[5]

Though Wooten's basses receive much attention, his most frequent and consistent response when asked by his fans about his equipment (or equipment in general) is that "the instrument doesn't make the 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."^[6] 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, while speaking or listening, one doesn'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.

As well as playing electric bass (both fretted and fretless), and the double bass, Victor also played the cello in high school. He still plays cello occasionally with the Flecktones. This is the instrument to which he attributes his musical training.

Discography

Bibliography

• The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music, ISBN 9780425220931, Penguin Group, 2008

References

External links

• Victor Lemonte Wooten - official website
• Victor Lemonte Wooten Intervew with Anil Prasad of Innerviews
• Live performance photographs
• Interview from honesttune.com
• The Music Lesson website
• The Bass Vault