PHOTO CREDIT: MATT SIRCELY

We've all been listening to bassist Buell Neidlinger for years—we just didn't know it. From Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa, Neidlinger's discography alone could fill a reference volume. He has led bass sections in major symphonies and on hundreds of Hollywood film scores, like Edward Scissorhands and The Shawshank Redemption. Igor Stravinsky handpicked him to perform "L'Histoire du Soldat." Pointing across a smoky card table, he said: "I want that boy."

Born in New York City in 1936 and groomed as a cello prodigy, Neidlinger broke under pressure. "I had an episode—ended up in a mental institution. In those days, it was called 'sanitarium.'"

Ironically, he found his calling there. Neidlinger and elderly jazz pianist Joe Sullivan played during recreational hour while other patients knitted.

"There was an old piano down in the gymnasium—an upright, and it was not really in tune. Someone procured a plywood bass," he says. "I learned a lot very quickly."

After a stint at Yale at age 16, Neidlinger returned to New York. "At Eddie Condon's club, Walter Page [of the Count Basie Orchestra] would let me sit in for four sets while he sat down to the side. That was my jazz school, basically."

By age 25, he'd worked with Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Gil Evans, and Tony Bennett.

Neidlinger also befriended pianist Herbie Nichols, a jazz giant often compared to Thelonious Monk for his ability to alter form and harmony with grace. "He was the first homeless person I ever met," Neidlinger explains. Nichols would visit Neidlinger's loft after hours, spreading tall manuscripts across the piano for "rehearsal" (although they never gigged) before heading off to sleep on the subway. Nichols often referenced childhood memories of Trinidadian ensembles in the Bronx.

"He'd always say, 'And then I hear the strings here,'" recalls Neidlinger, but record producers would not "spring the extra hundred dollars" to hire the musicians. Shortly before Nichols died of leukemia in an indigent hospital ward in 1963, Neidlinger promised to record the tunes with strings and horns. In 1994, Neidlinger encountered Nichols in a dream while a group of friends played the compositions. The very next day, Neidlinger invited the same friends to record Blue Chopsticks, symbolically omitting bass and piano, but playing cello with violin, viola, and horns instead.

From 1955 to 1962, Neidlinger helped pioneer free jazz in Cecil Taylor's first quartet. "I had never heard anything like that before," says Neidlinger. "I still have some of the parts. The Smithsonian never called me to get copies of them. Imagine that," he jokes. "I just gave all of my bass music to the New England Conservatory."

Neidlinger co-founded the jazz department there in 1967.

He also engaged in music from historic Third Stream concerts to progressive bluegrass. During a Great American Music Band rehearsal with mandolinist David Grisman and fiddler Richard Greene in 1974, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia exclaimed: "Man, you turn this stuff into real Buellgrass!"

Buellgrass obliterates boundaries, inserts creative harmonies and textures into string-band tunes, and applies string arrangements to compositions by artists like Ornette Coleman and Monk. Underscoring the groove is Neidlinger's aesthetic for depth of sound.

"When I joined the Boston Symphony, I sat next to a guy whose teacher had played with Brahms. Had played with Chopin. Had played with Rachmaninoff. You see, that's the sound."

Neidlinger has just unveiled All Strung Out: Adventures in Buellgrass on the K2B2 label, initially available only through digital download at K2B2.com. He swears it will be his final release. The recording features four incarnations of the Buellgrass band with players that include Greene, Darol Anger, Andy Statman, Danny Barnes, and Robert Bowlin.

The cover art, a parody of Gulliver's Travels, offers a glimpse inside. Small caricatures have tied down Neidlinger by his hair.

"I'm pinned down—All Strung Out—and here are the people that are pinning me down: here's the great conductor Erich Leinsdorf, who chose me for the Boston Symphony. He's been speared by my bow. You can see his baton is a little bit bent and he's up in the air."

Other miniatures in the artwork include Taylor, Greene, drummer Peter Erskine, and saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre, "all of whom I've suffered under one way or another," he smiles.