Fleck, Bela

Bela Fleck

Banjo player, composer

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

Bela Fleck is an acknowledged master of the five-string banjo. An unassuming artist whose virtuoso performances fuse jazz, rock, Irish balladry, and blue-grass, Fleck fronts a band that cannot possibly be classified as strictly bluegrass or even “new grass.” His is an original style, a hip, urban sound that just happens to come from a backwoods instrument. Time magazine contributor John Elson called Fleck “the Paganini, or maybe the Jimi Hendrix,” of the banjo, noting that the three-time Grammy Award nominee has taken “this jangling folk instrument into jazz, classical music, and beyond.”

Fleck never touched a banjo until he was fourteen, but by the time he was in his mid-twenties, he was cutting solo albums and picking with the New Grass Revival, a premier bluegrass band. His later work, with the Flecktones, is more likely to be heard on jazz radio stations than on country shows. “I wanted to play like [pianist] Chick Corea,” Fleck disclosed in Down Beat magazine. “I could look up and down the banjo neck and everything was there that you needed to play the notes, but no one had come up with the technique to play it. I started working on things most musicians work out on for most instruments, like working on scales, finding a way to play the chords. There was nothing remarkable about the things I did except that they were on the banjo.”

Bela Fleck was born and raised in New York City, an unlikely environment from which to pull a love of the banjo. He and his brother lived with their mother, a public school teacher. “I never met my father,” Fleck declared in Time. “He taught German for a living but was crazy about classical music. He named me after Bela Bartok, the Hungarian composer. He named my brother Ludwig after Beethoven. It was rough. The torture started in kindergarten.”

Fleck was just about ready to start kindergarten when he had his first brush with the banjo. Like many Americans, he initially heard the instrument in the theme music of the 1960s television series The Beverly Hillbillies. Fleck recalled in Time that he and his brother were watching the show at his grandparents’ house. “The theme music started, and I had no idea it was the banjo,” he said. “It was Earl Scruggs in his prime. I only remember hearing something beautiful. It called out to me.”

Other musical influences intervened, however. Fleck learned to play guitar and was influenced by pop and rock as a youngster. Then, at 14, he saw the film Deliverance, with its “Duelling Banjos” bluegrass theme. “The sound of the banjo just killed me,” he remembered in Time. “It’s like hearing mercury.”

For the Record…

Born c. 1958 in New York, NY; son of a public school teacher. Education: Graduated from the New York High School of Music and Art, 1976; studied banjo under Tony Trischka, Erik Darling, and Mark Horowitz.

Banjo player and composer, 1976—. Played with Boston-based band Tasty Licks, 1976-79; member, with Jim Gaudreau and Glenn Lawson, of the group Spectrum, 1979-81; joined New Grass Revival, 1982; group disbanded, 1991; formed group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, c. 1989 (other members include Howard Levy on keyboards, Victor Wooten on bass guitar, and Roy Wooten on Drumitar). Also cut albums as a solo artist and has done studio work in Nashville with Loretta Lynn, the Statler Brothers, Randy Travis, and others. Has made television appearances, with the New Grass Revival and the Flecktones, on Hee Haw, Nashville Now, and the Lonesome Pine Specials.

Selected awards: Three Grammy Award nominations for instrumental solos; named top banjo player in the nation by Frets readers’ poll more than six times since 1981.

Addresses: Record company —Warner Bros., 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505-4694.

The shy and overweight teenager bought a banjo and began to spend up to eight hours a day locked in his room, experimenting with the instrument. He was accepted into Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, but since the banjo was not considered a serious instrument there, he played guitar and studied music theory. He took private banjo lessons with three teachers, Tony Trischka, Erik Darling, and Mark Horowitz. He also learned, as most bluegrass musicians do, from listening to and imitating such bluegrass pioneers as Scruggs and J. D. Crowe.

As soon as he graduated from high school in 1976, Fleck moved to Boston and took a job with the blue-grass band Tasty Licks. In 1979 he moved south to Lexington, Kentucky, to help form the group Spectrum. Fleck confessed to a Time correspondent that his first exposure to Southern bluegrass was a “big culture shock.” He added: “I was a little cocky, but down South, they didn’t think I sounded so great because I lacked tone and I didn’t have a great sense of rhythm. They were right.”

Fleck perfected his technique and cut his first solo album, Crossing the Tracks, in 1980. Two years later he joined Sam Bush, John Cowan, and Pat Flynn in the New Grass Revival. Throughout the 1980s the New Grass Revival offered a benchmark for experimental bluegrass. Stereo Review correspondent Alanna Nash proclaimed the band “the ultimate progressive supergroup” with “its own unique, indescribable, and innovative blend of jazz, rock, reggae, gospel, [rhythm and blues], and whatever else strikes its fancy.”

Almost every New Grass Revival album features an instrumental with Fleck as principal performer and composer. Among these are the Grammy-nominated “Seven by Seven,” “Big Foot,” and the popular “Metric Lips.” Nash commented that some of Fleck’s riffs on the New Grass albums are so hot that the artist “probably had to cool off in the shower between takes.”

The New Grass Revival disbanded in 1991, each member going his own way but holding out the option for a reunion in the future. In Fleck’s case, the split offered an opportunity to play more jazz-oriented material. He formed the Flecktones in 1990 with a pair of brothers, Victor and Roy Wooten, on bass and Drumitar, and added Howard Levy on keyboards and harmonica. The group’s albums have sold well to jazz enthusiasts, while Fleck continues to appear at the more progressive bluegrass festivals—especially the annual affair in Telluride, Colorado.

In The Big Book of Bluegrass, Fleck discussed his artistic goals and his position in the music business. “I think I just have to follow the path where the music leads me and play as many different kinds of things as I can,” he said. “Basically, I try not to take it all too seriously. As Alan Munde once said, It’s only a banjo.’ I mean, how seriously can you take it? ‘It’s like being the best kazoo player in the world.”

Critics have taken it seriously indeed. Elson concluded that Fleck’s work “is pure revelation.… His technique is always at the service of a sophisticated musical imagination that can make the [banjo] sound as if it were born to play jazz.”

Selected discography

Solo albums

Crossing the Tracks, Rounder, 1980.

Natural Bridge, Rounder, 1982.

Daybreak, Rounder, 1987.

(With Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Connor, and others) Inroads, Rounder, 1987.

Places, Rounder, 1988.

Double Time, Rounder.

Drive, Rounder.

With Tasty Licks

Anchored to the Shore, Rounder.

Tasty Licks, Rounder.

With Spectrum

Opening Roll, Rounder.

Spectrum Live in Japan, Rounder.

Too Hot for Words, Rounder.

With the New Grass Revival

Deviation, Rounder, 1985.

On the Boulevard, Sugar Hill, 1985.

New Grass Revival, EMI America, 1986.

Hold to a Dream, Capitol, 1988.

Friday Night in America, Capitol, 1989.

The New Grass Revival Live, Sugar Hill, 1989.

New Grass Anthology, Capitol, 1990.

With the Flecktones

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Warner Bros., 1990.

Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, Warner Bros., 1991.

UFO Tofu, Warner Bros., 1992.

Sources

Books

Kochman, Marilyn, editor, The Big Book of Bluegrass, Morrow, 1984.

Periodicals

Bluegrass Unlimited, November 1978.

Chicago, December 1986.

Down Beat, July 1986; July 1988; August 1991.

Guitar Player, February 1989; July 1990.

People, May 25, 1992.

Rolling Stone, July 13, 1989.

Stereo Review, May 1985; January 1988; November 1988; September 1990.

Time, June 11, 1990.

Variety, July 4, 1990.

—Anne Janette Johnson