Victor Wooten

Live in America
Compass 7 4323 2

by Reid Mitchell

                                       "Because what we do live is so different from what we do in the

                                        studio, people often come up to us requesting a live CD.

                                        Well, here it is." ---Victor Wooten

Live in America is a two CD set designed to show what jazz and funk bassist extraordinaire Victor Wooten and his brothers sound like in their live shows. They don't sound much like Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, the well-known banjo-led band for whom Wooten plays bass. Nor do they sound particularly like Wooten's studio albums. What they do sound like is a 1970s funk revival band of amazing virtuosity and depth, able to stray into hiphop, soulful contemporary R&B, and sometimes even into jazz. Overwhelmingly, this is a crank-it-up-and-boogie-down-all-night album. Wooten's core band consists of himself on bass and a bass-driven synthesizer, Regi Wooten on electric guitar, Joseph Wooten on keyboards and that Soviet-invented outer space instrument, the theremin, and J.D. Blair on drums. Guest artists -- most notably legendary funk bassist and Wooten's groove-grandfather Bootsy Collins -- appear on various cuts.

Wooten's Live in America is funky enough that Rockzillaworld's editor sent it to New Orleans to be reviewed. New Orleans is one of the places where funk got codified and I can tell you that with Live in America, Victor Wooten and his brothers have submitted the masterpiece that earns them the titles Doctors of Phunkology.

The potential problem is that people might expect Live in America not to be a funk album, which it mostly is, but a jazz album, which it mostly isn't. There are jazz moments; for example, a fine piano solo in Hormones in the Headphones, the incredible interchange between guest bassist Marcus Miller and Wooten on Miller's own "Panther" and Jaco Pastorious's "Teen Town."

But the funk standouts, pieces like the James Brown and the Sly Stone medleys, better represent the sounds that characterize the album. (The idea of covering "Iron Man" sounds more fun than the cover itself.) Big brother Regi's "Tappin' and Thumpin'," which applies what we think of as electric bass techniques to electric guitar, shows he influenced Victor long before Stanley Clarke or Pastorious did, and deserves his family nickname "The Teacher."

By now readers out there, and particularly Wooten fans, are suspecting me of secret jazz snobbery -- hey, even open jazz snobbery -- and are wondering when I'm going to launch into some talk about the lapidary tones of Lester Young's later period combined with the enigmatic silences of Mile Davis's Kind of Blue -- you ALWAYS have to mention Miles Davis in any piece written on jazz recorded after 1958 -- and the fusion-patische of Jaco Pastrami of the African mythology of John Coltrane -- you ALWAYS have to mention John Coltrane, particularly if you forgot to mention Miles (called Miles like he's your old buddy, your Main Man) and let's not leave out -- Ornette....and finally, why isn't he playing an upright bass!

Nope. But what I am saying is that the expectations one brings to Live in America is going to influence individual reactions to it. As a way to remember a Wooten live gig and as a way to attend one if the Wooten brothers don't come to your town, Live in America is superlative. But if you want to introduce yourself to Victor Wooten, the jazz bassist, start with one of the studio albums. There are Victor Wooten fans who don't like Live in America. I bet there are Live in America fans who wouldn't like the studio CDs.

Victor Wooten shouldn't be labeled a funk player or a jazz musician. He shouldn't be labeled at all. He is a genre-hopper. He is an innovative and sometimes experimental musician who can nonetheless drive a dance band and who finds no contradiction between Art and Entertainment. He is also a self-confessed optimist:

Some say we're living in the last days
We're entering the last phase
On this planet called Earth
But when I close my eyes
I see the brightness of a new dawn
A barrier to go beyond
I feel hopeful for what it's worth
But still
Some say, boy,
You're just too optimistic
Don't you know the world's going to end
We're just going to be statistics
I don't know
I see a rainbow as the product of a storm
As the sun shines down to keep us warm
And the winds of change blow
You might call it a dream
But when I dream
I dream in color

* Wooten's official website is at www.victorwooten.com. Also check him out at www.compassrecords.com


Contact Reid Mitchell at: reid-at-rockzilla.net

 
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