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With such albums as Songbook (1985), Blue Skies (1988), and Blue Light Til Dawn (1993), many critics call her the finest jazz vocalist of her generation, but Cassandra Wilson simply calls herself a musician. The daughter of a bassist and guitarist who played with Sonny Boy Williamson and Ray Charles, she first began playing piano and guitar at the age of nine and started performing professionally during the mid-1970s. After moving to New York, she became the lead vocalist for M-Base, an ensemble. She also worked with New Air, before venturing on her own to establish a successful solo career. Adept at scat and other forms of improvisational singing, Wilson has drawn fire from some critics who complain that she sometimes sings second-rate material. In 1997, Wilson toured as part of Winton Marsalis' Blood on the Fields, a concert piece on American slavery. She released Blue Moon Rendezvous in 1998, and Traveling Miles, a tribute to Miles Davis, in 1999. Her latest release, Glamoured in late 2003, features her interpretations of such disparate artists as Sting, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan.
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About Cassandra Wilson
b. 4 December 1955, Jackson, Mississippi, USA. Wilson started piano and guitar lessons at the age of nine. In 1975 she began singing professionally, primarily folk and blues, working in various R&B and Top 20 cover version bands. She emerged as a jazz singer while studying with drummer Alvin Fielder and singing with the Black Arts Music Society in her hometown. In 1981, she moved to New Orleans and studied with saxophonist Earl Turbinton. A year later she relocated to New York at the suggestion of trumpeter Woody Shaw and began working with Dave Holland and Abbey Lincoln. In 1985, she guested on Steve Coleman's Motherland Pulse and was asked by the JMT label to record her own albums. Her debut was Point Of View, which featured Coleman and guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly. New York's finest wanted to work with her.
She sang with New Air, Henry Threadgill's trio, and he returned the compliment by helping with arrangements on her second, more powerful album, Days Aweigh. Her mix of smoky, knowing vocals and expansive, lush music that traveled between psychedelia and swing was transfixing. The more conservative American audience was won over by her record of standards, Blue Skies (1988), which was named jazz album of the year by Billboard magazine. The follow-up, the innovative sci-fi epic Jumpworld (1990), showed that Cassandra Wilson was not to be easily categorized: it included raps and funk as well as jazz and blues. This stylistic diversity was maintained on 1991's She Who Weeps.
In the 90s, Wilson continued to record on Steve Coleman's albums and made guest appearances with other musicians associated with Coleman's M-Base organization, such as Greg Osby and Robin Eubanks. Her latest recordings on Blue Note Records have exposed her to a much wider market. New Moon Daughter (a number 1 album in the US jazz chart) featured songs by the Monkees, U2, Hank Williams, Son House and Neil Young, while both Traveling Miles and Belly Of The Sun mixed superb Wilson originals with vivid interpretations of material by Miles Davis (the former) and Antonio Carlos Jobim and Bob Dylan (the latter).