Fleck Strums Up Support for Banjo

The joke: “What is perfect pitch?”

The punch line: “A banjo going into a trash can without hitting the sides.”

Bela Fleck has heard that one, and many others like it.

The banjo--behind perhaps only the bagpipe and accordion--has an image problem. While it should be known for its unique driving sound and the virtuosity of such players as Fleck and Earl Scruggs, the instrument still conjures visions of the toothless banjo-playing hillbilly in the 1972 film “Deliverance.”

“It’s a strange combination of things with me,” Fleck said. “Here, I’m a New York City kid and I fall in love with the banjo. Then I get turned on to [jazz] fusion.

“But that was the ‘60s for you. Growing up in the ‘60s, nothing seemed odd. You just did what felt right to you.”

Fleck has spent his career redefining his instrument and trying to earn respect for it. First establishing himself as the premier bluegrass banjo player in the 1980s, he’s since worked to fit the banjo into contexts like progressive rock, jazz, jazz-rock fusion and classical music.

Measured by the loyal following of his 11-year-old band, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, he is succeeding. The hard-touring group is a favorite of the same crowd of music fans turning out to hear Phish and the Dave Matthews Band.

“Outbound” is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ seventh album. It’s a typically diverse mix of musical styles performed with consummate musicianship. The Flecktones are Victor Wooten on bass; Future Man (Wooten’s brother) on percussion, vocals and Synth-Axe Drumitar (a guitar-synthesizer-drum machine contraption of his own invention); and Jeff Coffin on saxophone.

At times, the music sounds like Sting without vocals (especially on “Lover’s Leap”), with touches of Yes-style progressive rock and jazz fusion. Occasional vocals are handled by Future Man and guests Jon Anderson (of Yes) and Shawn Colvin.

Fleck was first captivated by banjo when he heard Scruggs play it at the start of “The Beverly Hillbillies” TV show, which ran from 1962 to 1971. He attended the High School for Performing Arts in New York City, where he was the only banjo player trying to play bebop jazz.

At 16, he went to hear rock-jazz fusion group Return to Forever.

“When I heard Return to Forever, I had an epiphany,” Fleck said. “As a banjo player, nobody was playing the way these guys were playing on their instruments. . . . These guys were such masters. A big part of me was stung by the mastery, that you could be that good on an instrument. And it inspired me.

“I went home and I said to myself, ‘All those notes are on the banjo, and I have to go find them.’ ”

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First, he established his bluegrass credentials playing with the bands Spectrum and New Grass Revival. The latter band was vastly influential with its progressive bluegrass sound that brought reggae rhythms and R&B; vocalist John Cowan into the mix.

New Grass Revival made an unsuccessful attempt at mainstream country-music stardom in the late 1980s, and prejudice against the banjo played a part in sinking that effort.

“They could very easily [have] replaced me with a drummer and had a much easier time,” Fleck said. “But musically, I had to leave, because I got this opportunity to do the kind of music I wanted to do ever since I was a teenager listening to Chick Corea, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Yes.”

The Flecktones have explored all those musical niches, while Fleck has pursued a parallel solo career that’s taken him even farther afield.

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As part of his new recording deal with Sony Classical, he’s working on solo classical and jazz albums. On the jazz record he hopes to recruit some traditional jazz players to help him find where the banjo might fit in.

The banjo “hasn’t been in that music since Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong,” he said.

The classical project will be first.

“I’ve been studying and working and looking for pieces and learning them on the banjo,” Fleck said. “A lot of Bach, some Scarlatti sonatas, a Paganini, a Tchaikovsky piece.”

It’s all part of forgetting stereotypes and grasping possibilities.

“If I can make the banjo work in any kind of music that it hasn’t been in before, I feel a certain sense of accomplishment,” Fleck said.

“If the banjo wasn’t dumped on and discriminated against, I wouldn’t have as much opportunity. You know what I mean?”