Victor Wooten

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Victor Lemonte Wooten (born September 11, 1964) is an American bassist, songwriter, and record producer. He has played with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since 1988 and is a member of SMV with Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller. From 2017 to 2019 he played bass for the metal band Nitro. He owns Vix Records and has written two books: The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music and its sequel, The Spirit of Music: The Lesson Continues (2021). Wooten has won five Grammy Awards and was named Bass Player of the Year by Bass Player magazine three times, the first person to win the award multiple times. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked him No. 10 on their Top 10 Bassists of All Time list.

Born in Mountain Home, Idaho, he is the youngest of five Wooten brothers—Regi, Roy, Rudy, and Joseph—who are all musicians. His brother Regi started teaching him bass when he was two, and by six he was already performing with his brothers in The Wooten Brothers Band. The family moved often as part of a United States Air Force family, finally settling in Newport News, Virginia, in 1972. He graduated from Denbigh High School in 1982 and played at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, during high school. In 1987 a trip to Nashville helped him connect with Béla Fleck.

In 2000 Wooten started Bass/Nature Camp, which grew into Victor Wooten's Center for Music and Nature at Wooten Woods in Only, Tennessee near Nashville. He co-leads the Victor Wooten/Berklee Summer Bass Workshop at Berklee College of Music in Boston with Steve Bailey, a collaboration that has continued since the early 1990s. He has been featured on Making Music Magazine’s May/June 2014 cover to discuss his camps.

Wooten is known for playing Fodera basses, including a signature model. His famous 1983 Monarch Deluxe, called “Number 1,” features a Kahler Tremolo System bridge. Fodera’s Yin Yang basses, co-designed with Wooten, use the Yin-Yang symbol in their design. He plays electric bass (fretted and fretless), double bass, and occasionally cello, which he has played with the Flecktones and on touring projects such as Sword and Stone/Words and Tones in 2012.