artist info

The Wooten brothers’ first public performance occurred in Hawaii in 1966 and established their identity as prodigies. Regi, the eldest son of Elijah "Pete" and Dorothy, was born in 1956. The first three sons arrived just a year apart—Roy in ’57, Rudy in ’58. Joseph was born in ’61, and three years later, in '64, Victor came. Victor learned to talk and play music at the same time.

Fast forward six years. Regi, still the leader of the family band, is 13 years old and Victor, the youngest, is 5, when the Wooten Brothers began opening a series of shows for R&B legends, “War”, and two years later for Curtis Mayfield, and many other national acts.

Fast forward to the present. The Wootens have racked up 10 Grammy wins, and 26 Grammy nominations. And the youngest of the family, Victor, the brother who learned from all his older brothers, has been named by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the ten greatest bass players of all time.

The Wooten Brothers began in R&B. They evolved as teens into Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Classical and Country. Then, they emerged in 1985 on Arista records with an album called, "The Wootens", that combined Electronic, Funk, Soul, Disco, and Boogie—and offered only a sliver of the Wooten whole.

The Wooten whole is all of that… and classical, jazz, country, and Rock-and-Roll. The Wooten whole is Prince before Prince. Maybe Clive Davis and the Arista team, who were focused on launching the extraordinary Whitney Houston, were not ready for that in 1985.

So many albums after that Arista album, as the Wootens go their separate ways, they play in giant arenas and intimate clubs, crisscrossing the globe. They always come back to play together, sometimes close to home, sometimes a thousand miles away from their Middle-Tennessee homes.

The Wootens hone their craft, taking the diamond and cutting it just right, and polishing it bright. It’s not just the in-born genius. It’s not just the wisdom and insight that comes from inspired and gentle living close to nature, close to art, close to each other. It is a disciplined commitment to the craft of making sound in community and sharing sound with community—born of knowing sound and the precious space of silence, — a true, good, and saving thing.

And so they create new instruments, they revive compositions of dead composers, they leave the families they love, to bring the world they love the sounds they love. And they keep creating, performing, and recording new music.

The Wooten Brothers have put the "fun" into funky with their new hit, "Sweat" the first single to be released off their forthcoming album. Give a look and listen below, then grab your tickets for the show!