Art Wooten (died 1986) was the first fiddler in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. He played in the early lineups of all three founding bluegrass bands: Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, the Stanley Brothers’ Clinch Mountain Boys, and Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Boys. In 1950 he won the fiddle contest and the best all-around performer prize at the Old Fiddlers’ Convention in Galax, Virginia.
Why Wooten matters
Bluegrass fiddle has a first chair, and Wooten sat in it. He played fiddle for Monroe before the classic 1945 band, before Chubby Wise, before Earl Scruggs. Then he did the same job for the two bands that grew out of Monroe’s. His playing sits on the 1941 Blue Grass Boys session and the spring 1949 Flatt and Scruggs Mercury sides. If you want to hear what bluegrass fiddle sounded like before the style had a name, Wooten is where to listen.
Life and career
Wooten’s home ground was the Blue Ridge. Galax contest records list him from Marion, Virginia, in 1950, and he lived in Sparta, North Carolina, in his later years.
He was the fiddler in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the band’s first years. Tommy Magness replaced him in the summer of 1940, before Monroe’s first recording session that October. Wooten was back on fiddle for the 1941 session, where he played on Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel No. 7) with Pete Pyle on guitar and Bill Westbrook on bass. Bluegrass Today calls that cut one of the best Blue Grass Boys recordings from before Scruggs joined.
After Monroe he worked with the Stanley Brothers. In 1949 he joined Flatt and Scruggs when Jim Shumate left the road to go back to his furniture job in Hickory, North Carolina. Wooten recorded four songs with the Foggy Mountain Boys for Mercury in Cincinnati that spring.
Back home, he won at Galax. The 1950 Old Fiddlers’ Convention gave him first place in fiddle, first in novelty numbers, and the award for best all-around performer. His band, the Sunny Valley Boys of Marion, Virginia, won the band contest the same year, and David Lee Wooten of Marion took first in banjo. Art Wooten died after a long illness in Sparta, North Carolina, on October 6, 1986, at age 80.
Playing style
Wooten was an old-time contest fiddler first. His 1950 sweep at Galax, in fiddle and in novelty numbers, shows a player with the dance drive and the crowd sense of the Blue Ridge conventions. That is the sound Monroe hired for the first Blue Grass Boys. On the 1941 Anniversary Blue Yodel cut he works without a banjo, answering Monroe’s voice between the lines, which is the job a bluegrass fiddler still does today. The double-stop harmony language of later bluegrass fiddle came after his time in the band.
Influences and legacy
Wooten played beside Monroe, Carter and Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt, and Earl Scruggs in the years when those bands set the rules for bluegrass. Tommy Magness followed him in the Blue Grass Boys, and Chubby Wise later made the chair famous. Jim Shumate and Paul Warren sit on either side of him in the Flatt and Scruggs fiddle line. Art Stamper and Curly Ray Cline came after him with the Stanleys.
Signature tunes and songs
Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel No. 7), with Bill Monroe, 1941.
Essential recordings
Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel No. 7), Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys (1941) Flatt and Scruggs Mercury sides recorded in Cincinnati (Mercury, 1949)
Awards and honors
Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention, first place fiddle (1950) Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention, first place novelty numbers (1950) Galax Old Fiddlers’ Convention, best all-around performer (1950)
What to learn from Wooten
Learn Monroe’s 1941 Anniversary Blue Yodel and copy the fiddle fills between the vocal lines. The technique to steal is restraint. Wooten plays a short answer to each line and then gets out of the way. In a jam, that habit makes a singer sound better and keeps the fiddle from stepping on the words. It is the oldest trick in bluegrass fiddle, and Wooten was there when it started.
Sources
1950 winners, Old Fiddlers’ Convention, Galax I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky #6, Bluegrass Today I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky #21, Bluegrass Today Rodgers Remembrance XVII: Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel No. 7), Bluegrass Today Foggy Mountain Troubadour out today, Bluegrass Today Art Wooten, Discogs
Related players
See the fiddle players hub and the fiddle guide for the rest of the first generation. Tommy Magness took over from Wooten in the Blue Grass Boys, and Chubby Wise played the chair on the classic 1945 records. Jim Shumate held the Flatt and Scruggs job before him.