Béla Fleck - Biography
Béla Fleck is the most innovative banjo player to come along since Earl Scruggs, but with an approach that’s more adventurous than anything Scruggs ever dreamed of. He’s taken an African American folk instrument often looked down upon by “serious” musicians and made it a showcase for his amazing picking and composing. Fleck has won eight Grammys in more different categories—jazz, country, pop, bluegrass, and classical—than any other musician, and continues to astound with his open-ended musical vision.
Fleck was born in New York City, but never met his father, a classical music fanatic that named him after his favorite composer, Béla Bartok. Fleck’s brother was named Ludwig, after Beethoven, which led to serious ridicule for both boys in grammar school. Fleck picked up the guitar early and played pop and rock music, although he recalls hearing the sound of Earl Scruggs picking banjo on the theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies television show. When Fleck heard “Dueling Banjos” blaring out of the soundtrack of Deliverance at his local movie theater, he was hooked.
In 1973, the year Fleck started classes at the High School of Music and Art, his grandfather bought him a banjo and his course was set. Unfortunately, banjo wasn’t part of the school’s music curriculum, so Fleck took instruction on French horn and chorus. On the side he took lessons with Erik Darling of The Weavers and Rooftop Singers and Tony Trischka, another picker with a wide-ranging style. He spent his high school years in his bedroom practicing eight hours a night. Just before he graduated high school, Fleck saw Return to Forever live, and he considered the idea of playing post-bop jazz on the banjo.
After graduation Fleck moved to Boston to play bluegrass with The Tasty Licks. He made his first recording with the Licks on Rounder, who then the label signed him to a solo deal. His debut album, Crossing the Tracks (1979 Rounder/2005 Rounder), featured bluegrass, jazz, swing and newgrass arrangements, although the newgrass genre didn’t technically exist yet.
Fleck then relocated to Kentucky to start a band called Spectrum. He stayed on the road with them for two years and cut the record, Opening Roll Rounder (1980 Rounder). Before moving on to play with New Grass Revival, Fleck made his second solo outing, Natural Bridge (1982 Rounder), with David Grisman, Mark O’Connor, Ricky Skaggs, Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, and other heavy hitters. The album is considered by some to be the first jazzgrass recording ever made.
Fleck played with New Grass Revival for nine years, helping to pioneer their fusion of bluegrass with of jazz, rock, reggae, gospel, and R&B. Throughout the decade of the ’80s, he appears with the group on the albums Deviation (1985 Rounder), On the Boulevard (1985 Sugar Hill), New Grass Revival (1986 EMI), Hold to a Dream (1988 Capitol) and Friday Night in America (1989 Capitol). Three of the tunes he wrote for New Grass Revival were nominated for Grammys—“Seven by Seven,” “Big Foot,” and “Metric Lips.”
In the late-’80s, still during the New Grass years, Fleck managed to make several solo albums, as well, including Daybreak (1987 Rounder), Places (1988 Rounder), and Drive (1988 Rounder). After New Grass broke up, Fleck was briefly in the acoustic super group Strength in Numbers with Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor. The group made one album together, The Telluride Sessions (1989 MCA).
Fleck was living in Nashville in 1990 and put together his groundbreaking group, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, with Victor Wooten (bass), Howard Levy (keyboards and harmonica), and Victor’s brother Roy Wooten (a.k.a. FutureMan) on the hybrid drumitar (drum/guitar/synthesizer). Fleck produced Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (1990 Warner) independently, but Warner Brothers quickly picked it up for national release. Its combination of jazz and bluegrass, captured live in the studio, was immediately heralded and it won a Grammy nomination.
The follow-up by the group—Flight of the Cosmic Hippo (1991 Warner)—was another winner. Hippo topped Billboard’s Jazz chart and earned yet another Grammy nomination, this time for Best Jazz Album. Levy would depart the band after UFO Tofu (1991 Warner) came out. But his absence was inconspicuous, as Three Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1993 Warner) studio performers included Bruce Hornsby, Branford Marsalis and sax player Roderick Ward. When out touring, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones performed as threesome until sax man Jeff Coffin came aboard in 1997.
Coffin’s first disc with the band was Left of Cool (1998 Warner), which won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition (other than jazz) for the track “Almost 12.” Béla Fleck and the Flecktones’ first retrospective collection was Greatest Hits of the 20th Century (1996 Warner), and it included a new track, “The Sinister Mister.” The song would win a Grammy in the Best Pop Instrumental Performance category that same year.
In between a relentless touring schedule that often saw the band playing upwards of 200 nights a year, Fleck found time to wax two “solo” outings, Tales From the Acoustic Planet (1994 Warner) and The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2 (1999 Warner). Tales From the Acoustic Planet was an all-star jazzgrass jam with Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, Victor Wooten and FutureMan. Vol. 2, as advertised, was a return to Fleck’s newgrass roots with Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Tony Rice, Mark Schatz, Vassar Clements, John Hartford, and Earl Scruggs lending support. Fleck also took home a Best Country Instrumental Performance Grammy for his collaboration with Asleep at the Wheel on “Hightower,” from their Wheel Keeps a-Rollin’ (1995 Capitol) album.
Outbound (2000 Columbia) saw Fleck and the Flecktones adding elements of Irish, South African and Indian Classical music, played on his own invention—the sitar/banjo. Outbound won a Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy for the band. That same year, Fleck’s contribution to Alison Brown’s album Fair Weather (2000 Compass) won a Grammy in the Best Country Instrumental Performance category for the track, “Leaving Cottondale.”
Fleck took on classical music with bass player Edgar Meyer on Perpetual Motion (2001 Sony Classical), playing the music of Bach, Chopin, Debussy, and Niccolò Paganini. The group’s take on Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum” won Grammy’s in both the Best Classical Crossover Album and Best Instrumental Arrangement categories.
While working with the Flecktones and Bobby McFerrin, The Chieftains, Nickel Creek, and other friends on the epic three-CD set Little Worlds (2003 Columbia)—an album that touched on Hip-Hop, Chinese, Irish, and Hawaiian music as well as funk—Fleck found time to cut Tabula Rasa (2002 Water Lily Acoustics). The album was a world fusion session with Vishwa Bhatt on Mohan Vina, an Indian slide guitar and Chinese musician Jie-Bing Chen on erhu, a Chinese folk violin. Tabula Rasa was nominated for a Best World Music Album Grammy.
In 2006 Fleck produced Song of the Traveling Daughter (Nettwerk), the debut album by banjo player Abigail Washburn, who blends Chinese folk music with bluegrass. Fleck joined her band The Sparrow Quartet for The Sparrow Quartet EP (2005 Nettwerk) and Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet (2008 Nettwerk.) He also made a new Flecktones album, The Hidden Land (2006 Columbia), which grabbed another Grammy in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category.
Jingle All the Way (2008 Rounder), the Flecktones first holiday album, is another eclectic excursion, which a few subtle flourishes, such as Tuvan throat singing by the Alash Ensemble. In 2011 he released Rocket Science.
