grew up in a military family, the youngest of five brothers. Born in Idaho, he had lived in Hawaii and California before the family settled in Newport News, Virginia. His brothers all played (instruments) and sang, and by the time Victor was 3, oldest brother Regi was teaching him to play bass. Never mind that the instrument's neck and fretboard were too big for 3-year-old hands. "At that age you don't think 'I can't do this 'cause I'm too young,'" he says. "Everyone around me was doing music, so I didn't even think, l just did it. I take the same approach to everything I do. I don't worry about whether there's a market for it, I just set my mind to the task and do the best I can. One of the big lessons my parents taught me was that as long as your motivations and reasons are right, you can do just about anything you want."

Victor made his professional stage debut when he was 5 in The Wootens, the five-brother band that played the radio hits of the day - - Sly & the Family Stone, War, James Brown, Motown, Curtis Mayfield -- at local recreation center dances. The next year they were opening concert tours for Curtis Mayfield and War. And they spent several years playing music and honing their skills at Busch Gardens theme park in Williamsburg, VA.

"By the time I was 8 we considered ourselves seasoned professionals. The routine was: Get up, go to school, go home and do homework, take a nap, then go play a gig from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. At a lot of places we couldn't even leave the stage because the place served alcohol and we were minors. It was a good time to grow up because where today you've got samplers and sequencers to copy anything, back then if we heard sounds on a record, we found ways to do them live with what we had."

The Wootens recorded an album for Arista Records in 1985 and learned the ups and downs of the record business from the experience. Two brothers played on Whitney Houston's debut album. Today Joseph is the keyboardist in the Steve Miller Band, Rudy is a saxophonist in Virginia, and Regi plays guitar and teaches in Nashville.

By 1988 Victor moved to his current home, Nashville, to play in a rock band. The next year he met New Grass Revival's banjo ace Béla Fleck, who needed to put together a jazz- band, quick, to do a "Lonesome Pine Special" television special, Victor and drummer brother Roy (Future Man) became the rhythm section, with Howard Levy on keyboards and harmonica, and the Flecktones were born. There were no precedents for the Flecktones, a bluegrass banjo with electric bass and synthesized drums. "We just clicked." Wooten recalls. Soon Fleck said goodbye to NGR, and the Flecktones have been busy ever since, landing an album in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard jazz chart, and picking up four Grammy Award nominations.

Since Levy left at the end of 1992, the Flecktones have continued as a trio with invited guest players that indicate how stylistically free-swinging the band is: Branford Marsalis, Paul McCandless, Bruce Hornsby, Grover Washington Jr., steel drummer Andy Narell, and Chick Corea.

In 1997, they won the "Best Pop Instrumental Performance" Grammy for "The Sinister Minister" from their "Live Art" CD. Recorded live in 1995, the track features special guests Howard Levy, Sam Bush, and Paul McCandless.

While Victor can name dozens of bass players who have been influential - - from Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham to Stanley Clarke and Motown's James Jamerson - - "overall it's about the music. Bass is just my way of playing the music."

More info:

http://www.flecktones.com/music/cdvictor.htm

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