Word: fleck
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Musically speaking, jazz banjo is a long way from where Bela began. He was born in New York City. His mother was a public school teacher. "I never met my father," Fleck says. "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...
...instrument offered more than aesthetic satisfaction. "My brother and I were overweight as kids," Fleck recalls. "So I didn't have a great self- image, but I found this thing I could do that made me feel good. I played banjo all the time and stopped eating for satisfaction. I almost feel that I have a deal with the banjo, that if I put the time in and take care of it, I'll be thin and have something. And if I don't, part of me is afraid it will all fall apart...
...Fleck attended Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, where banjo was not considered a serious instrument. So he studied privately, first with Erik Darling, onetime member of the Weavers folk quartet, and eventually with Trischka, an urban bluegrass whiz. Even then, Fleck was an eclectic, trying to absorb everything from salsa to jazz. Especially jazz. "I bought a Charlie Parker record, and I thought, "Wow! This is incredible." I tried to learn Parker's licks on the banjo, but I couldn't find the notes." One day, in a high school jazz-appreciation class, the teacher played pianist...
...Fleck moved to Lexington, Ky., to help start a group called Spectrum. Exposure to bluegrass -- the real thing -- was a "big culture shock," he admits. "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." In 1981 Fleck moved to Nashville and joined the group that would be his musical home for the next eight years: the New Grass Revival, which played what Bela calls "high-tech bluegrass with a lot of heart and intensity; the singing...
Television provided Fleck with the chance to escape what he eventually felt were the Revival's constraints. Two years ago, producers of the Lonesome Pine Specials asked him to do a solo show. Bela Fleck and Guests began with the tux-clad banjoist joining the Blair String Quartet in a four-movement classical work by Fleck and composer Edgar Meyer. It ended with a jazz section riffed by Bela and the trio that became the Flecktones: Howard Levy on keyboards and harmonica, the brothers Victor and Roy ("Future Man") Wooten on bass guitar and Drumitar (a guitar wired to electric...