Victor Wooten

Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964) is an American bass player, composer, author, producer, and recipient of five Grammy Awards.

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. 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.

Wooten has also written a novel titled "The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music". On his website he has stated that he is currently writing a sequel and intends to release at least three more books

Early life
Born to Dorothy and Pete Wooten, Victor is the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, the other four being Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph Wooten, all of whom are musicians. Regi began to teach Victor to play bass when he was two, and by the age of six, Victor was performing with his brothers in their family band, The Wooten Brothers Band.

Instruments
Wooten is most often seen playing Fodera basses, of which he has a signature model. His most famous Fodera, a 1983 Monarch Deluxe he refers to as "number 1," sports a Kahler Tremolo System model 2400 bridge. Fodera's "Yin Yang" basses (co-designed by and created for Wooten) incorporates the Yin Yang symbol—which Wooten uses in various media—as a focal point of the top's design and construction. The symbol is created from two pieces of naturally finished wood (Ebony and Holly, for example), fitted together to create the Yin-Yang pattern.

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.

Wooten has also experimented with backward vocals, chanting, and Asian percussion.

Workshops
In 2000 Wooten created a Bass/Nature camp that has since expanded into Victor Wooten's Center for Music and Nature.

Religious beliefs
While Wooten considers himself a spiritual individual, he is not a part of any particular religion. He believes that, "God is too big for any one religion."

Discography

 * Solo


 * A Show of Hands (1996)
 * What Did He Say? (1997)
 * Yin-Yang (1999)
 * Live in America (2001)
 * Soul Circus (2005)
 * Palmystery (2008)
 * A Show of Hands 15 (2011)
 * Words & Tones (2012)
 * Sword & Stone (2012)


 * With Bass Extremes


 * Cookbook (1998)
 * Just Add Water (2000)


 * With Vital Tech Tones


 * Vital Tech Tones (1998)
 * Vital Tech Tones 2 (2000)


 * With The Wootens


 * The Wootens (1985)


 * With Greg Howe


 * Extraction (2003)


 * With SMV


 * Thunder (2008) (with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller, as SMV)


 * With Béla Fleck and the Flecktones


 * Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (1990)
 * Flight of the Cosmic Hippo (1991)
 * UFO Tofu (1992)
 * Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1993)
 * Live Art (1996)
 * Left of Cool (1998)
 * Greatest Hits of the 20th Century (1999)
 * Outbound (2000)
 * ''Live at the Quick (2002)
 * Little Worlds (2003)
 * Ten From Little Worlds (2003)
 * The Hidden Land (2006)
 * Jingle All the Way (2008)
 * Rocket Science (2011)