Go to the biographical section of five-time Grammy winner Victor Wooten’s website, bit.ly/2xQ9SpQ, and the most prominent item at the top of the page isn’t a list of awards or other accolades he’s received throughout his amazing career.

It’s a quote from Mama Wooten, which states this:

“The world needs more than just good musicians. We need good people.”

Wooten, 53, who performs with his trio at The Ark in Ann Arbor on Oct. 26, is recognized as one of the world’s most electrifying jazz bassists. In 2011, Rolling Stone named him one of the Top 10 bassists of all time, and he has been voted in as Bassist of the Year three times by readers of Bass Player magazine.

But he lives by advice he was given as a child by his mother, Dorothy Wooten, and his father, Pete Wooten, military parents who raised a musical family while moving around with the Air Force.

Both have been deceased for several years, yet continue to be guiding lights for Wooten and his four older brothers: guitarist Regi, drummer Roy, saxophonist Rudy, and keyboardist Joseph. The five brothers entertained troops overseas in 1980 and 1981 as the band for the Busch Gardens USO show.

Mama Wooten’s reminder about the world needing good people was drilled into Victor and his brothers when they were young, to help keep their egos in check and never lose sight of what’s most important in life.

“Our Mom wasn’t saying, ‘Don’t play music,’” Wooten said in a telephone interview. “She was telling us, ‘It’s not just about you. You also should try to make the world better.’”

Wooten does that by being a devoted father to his four children, and trying to give back as an educator and inspirational speaker.

He teaches at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has riffed about both music and nature at Berklee, Stanford University, Strathmore College, Harvard University, Mississippi State University, Miami University, Middle Tennessee State University, and other educational institutions, as well as several music and nature camps, and a variety of spiritual centers.

One of his Berklee classes is called “Wooten’s Woodshed.” In it, he holds court with students from all departments.

“One of my main goals is to free up musicians,” Wooten said. “Jazz is how we talk. We have that freedom to say words however we want to say them. That freedom is what jazz should be.”

Learning music should be no different than developing as a human being. Babies learn to talk on their own, so musicians should learn to communicate without conforming to someone else’s expectations, he said.

Styles of jazz trumpet icons Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong were different because they had “their own musical voice,” Wooten said.

Wooten has played alongside some of the world’s most talented musicians. At the tender age of 2, he started playing music. By age 5, he was performing in nightclubs and theaters with his brothers. When he was 6, he was on tour with them opening shows for legendary soul artist Curtis Mayfield.

Over the years, he has played with War, Ramsey Lewis, the Temptations, Chick Corea, the Dave Matthews Band, Bootsy Collins, Branford Marsalis, Mike Stern, Prince, India Arie, Keb’ Mo’, Susan Tedeschi, Bruce Hornsby, Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and many others.

He rose to prominence in 1990 as a founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

“Bela is a musician who just happens to play banjo,” Wooten said. “Really, when I’m playing with Bela, I’m playing with Bela and not his banjo.”

Wooten said he “learned a whole lot about how to be a bandleader” from Fleck.

“He always taught us how to treat people,” he said.

When Wooten’s not touring, teaching, or in the studio recording, he might be at Wooten Woods, a 147-acre tract near Nashville that he and his wife, Holly, bought in 2008. Dozens of volunteers as far away as Singapore and Turkey helped them turn the site into a retreat.

Wooten Woods was originally conceived as a home for music and nature camps that Wooten has held for kids since 2000.

But it’s become a multipurpose venue for concerts, theater, family and class reunions, weddings, and just about any event in which people want to get back to nature. It’s nestled along beautiful Duck River, a stream featured in a 2010 National Geographic article.

Wooten said he gets kids to be better musicians by embracing the world around them, not staying in a classroom all day.

“A bird doesn’t have to go to college to sing. A beaver doesn’t have to go to school to chew down trees. Whether we realize it or not, we’re trying to be like nature,” he said. “Music should not be about music. Music should be about life experiences.”

In 2008, Wooten released a novel, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. The website All About Jazz ran a review that called Wooten’s book “a tour de force, a bold and courageous exploration of how to shift one's consciousness and engage the world from a non-ordinary perspective.”

Wooten’s current 28-city tour includes stops on at Rex Theater in Pittsburgh on Friday; Woodlands Tavern in Columbus on Saturday; and C2G Music Hall in Fort Wayne on Sunday, and Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on Nov. 4. The shows are in support of his 10th solo album, Trypnotyk. To read a Blade review on it, go to bit.ly/2gk4ro1.

Among his many other talents, Wooten is an acrobat, magician, and naturalist.

Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published October 24, 2017, 7:00 p.m.