Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

Blu-bop

Fleck met Howard Levy at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1987. In 1988, invited to play on PBS's The Lonesome Pine Specials, he assembled the group; Victor Wooten auditioned by phone and suggested his brother Roy, who plays the drumitar, an instrument he built himself. The style label blu-bop, bluegrass plus bebop, is attributed to AllMusic's Thom Jurek. The debut Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (March 6, 1990, Warner Bros., recorded 1989 at Javelina Studios in Nashville) reached 17 on Billboard's contemporary jazz chart, followed by Flight of the Cosmic Hippo (June 11, 1991), whose title came from an audience suggestion, Flight of the Codeine Hippo. Stuffed hippos are tossed to the audience at the encore.

Levy left in December 1992, reportedly to tour less, and the trio carried on until Jeff Coffin joined in 1997 (1998 on the infobox); Coffin left for the Dave Matthews Band in 2010 and Levy returned for Rocket Science (2011). Live Art (September 10, 1996) is the main official live document. Grammys include "The Sinister Minister" (1997, best pop instrumental performance), "Almost 12" (1998), Outbound (2000), The Hidden Land (2006), Jingle All the Way (2008) and "Life in Eleven" (2012). They went on hiatus in June 2012, announced a reunion in January 2016, played Telluride on June 16, 2016 and a 30th-anniversary show at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey on December 6, 2019 with Levy back. The Montreal International Jazz Festival gave Fleck its Miles Davis Award in 2018.