Bela Fleck: Yea, It’s A Banjo

The Artist:

“Béla Anton Leoš Fleck (born July 10, 1958) is an American banjo player. Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most innovative and technically proficient banjo players. he is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck was born in New York City, and is named after Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, Austrian composer Anton Webern and Czech composer Leoš Janáček. He was drawn to the banjo when he first heard Earl Scruggs play the theme song for the television show Beverly Hillbillies. Later, Fleck enrolled in New York City’s High School of Music and Art where he studied the French horn. He was a banjo student under Tony Trischka. Fleck released his first solo album in 1979, Crossing the Tracks, and made his first foray into progressive bluegrass composition. During the 1980s Fleck and Bush also performed live occasionally with Doc Watson and Merle Watson in various bluegrass festivals, most notably the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival. New Grass Revival was an American progressive bluegrass band founded in 1971, and composed of Sam Bush, Courtney Johnson , Ebo Walker, Curtis Burch, Butch Robins, John Cowan, Béla Fleck and Pat Flynn. They were active between 1971 and 1989, releasing more than twenty albums as well as six singles. Their highest-charting single is “Callin’ Baton Rouge”, which peaked at No. 37 on the U.S. country charts in 1989 and was a Top 5 country hit for Garth Brooks five years later.”  Source: Wikipedia and http://belafleck.com/bio/

By John Hill