Bela Fleck & The Flecktones

Drive is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. The album was produced toward the end of Fleck's New Grass Revival career and before the Flecktones were formed and included an all-star list of bluegrass performers. This album is a touchstone of modern acoustic music, and has since influenced almost every bluegrasser looking to break new ground. Bela would go on to do many fantastic things in a wide variety of genres, but in his bluegrass endeavors, this has to be consider among the best.

Though the Flecktones didn't change their formula with their third album, UFO Tofu, they did manage to craft one of their more consistent and impressive efforts. The band's fusion of jazz, bluegrass, and funk gels quite well on UFO Tofu – not only does Bela Fleck turn in a rich, eclectic performance, but pianist Howard Levy's deft lines and inventive phrasing dominate the album. Occasionally, the material is lightweight, functioning only as vehicle for the group's solos.

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has certainly broken more boundaries than any other picker in recent memory, from his early days performing bluegrass-inspired folk compositions on Rounder in the late '70s to his quirky jazz freak-outs with the Flecktones throughout the '90s. In late 2001, this peculiar innovator released an album of banjo interpretations of classical works by Bach, Chopin, and Scarlatti. Before classical purists roll their eyes, they must remember that the banjo hasn't always been seen as the instrument of choice of backwoods musicians in the Appalachian mountains, but as recently as the 1940s was used as a primary rhythm instrument in all manner of parlor music.

Aside from being legendary multiple Grammy-winning jazzmen on very different instruments, Chick Corea (piano) and Béla Fleck (the world's premier jazz banjo master) have a shared love for collaboration and the infinite improvisational possibilities their chosen idiom offers them. In some ways, the two have been preparing for this masterful, musical dialogue-driven masterpiece for over ten years. Fleck, who has always credited Corea as being one of his chief influences, invited the pianist to play on the Flecktones' Tales from the Acoustic Planet, as well as the group's live CD Live Art. Some years later, in 2001, Corea found a spot for Fleck on his Rendezvous in New York DVD.

Drive is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. The album was produced toward the end of Fleck's New Grass Revival career and before the Flecktones were formed and included an all-star list of bluegrass performers…

Released the same year as PLACES, 1987's DAYBREAK has less of the eclecticism of the former outing, but still captures banjo player Bela Fleck merging his bluegrass roots with forays into other genres (fusions he would perfect with his '90s outfit the Flecktones). The lead-off track, "Texas Barbeque," shows Fleck can still pick his way masterfully through the bluegrass idiom, but the following cut, a version of Chick Corea's romantic, pulsing composition "Spain" (with banjo and mandolin taking the lead lines), proves Fleck is no straight-laced traditionalist. Likewise, the Celtic-flavored "Growling Old Man and the Grumbling Old Woman," the Fats Waller rag "How Can You Face Me Now," and the sweeping ballad "The Natural Bridge Suite" have Fleck moving all over the musical map with grace and ease.