SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2016
VOLUME TWO NUMBER TWO
NINA SIMONE
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
NAT KING COLE
January 2-8
ETTA JAMES
January 9-15
JACKIE MCLEAN
January 16-22
TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON
January 23-29
NANCY WILSON
January 30-February 5
BOB MARLEY
February 6-12
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
February 13-19
HORACE SILVER
February 20-26
SHIRLEY HORN
February 27-March 4
T-BONE WALKER
March 5-11
HOWLIN’ WOLF
March 12-18
DIANNE REEVES
March 19-25
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/nancy-wilson-mn0000368367/biography
Nancy Wilson
Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny
Diva Nancy Wilson was among contemporary music's most stylish and sultry vocalists; while often crossing over into the pop and R&B markets -- and even hosting her own television variety program -- she remained best known as a jazz performer, renowned for her work alongside figures including Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH, Wilson first attracted notice performing the club circuit in nearby Columbus; she quickly earned a growing reputation among jazz players and fans, and she was recording regularly by the late '50s, eventually signing to Capitol and issuing LPs including 1959's Like in Love and Nancy Wilson with Billy May's Orchestra. Her dates with Shearing, including 1960's The Swingin's Mutual, solidified her standing as a talent on the rise, and her subsequent work with Adderley -- arguably her finest recordings -- further cemented her growing fame and reputation.
In the years to follow, however, Wilson often moved away from jazz, much to the chagrin of purists; she made numerous albums, many of them properly categorized as pop and R&B outings, and toured extensively, appearing with everyone from Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan to Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. She even hosted her own Emmy-winning variety series for NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show, and was a frequent guest performer on other programs; hits of the period included "Tell Me the Truth," "How Glad I Am," "Peace of Mind," and "Now, I'm a Woman." Regardless of how far afield she traveled, Wilson always maintained her connections to the jazz world, and in the 1980s, she returned to the music with a vengeance, working closely with performers including Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis, and Benny Golson. By the 1990s, she was a favorite among the "new adult contemporary" market, her style ideally suited to the format's penchant for lush, romantic ballads; she also hosted the Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio.
Meant to Be
In the early 2000s, Wilson recorded two albums with Ramsey Lewis for Narada (2002's Meant to Be and 2003's Simple Pleasures). Her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) was a blend of straight-ahead jazz and ballads, similar to her next record, 2006's Turned to Blue, which, like R.S.V.P., used a different instrumentalist for each track. In 2005, Capitol released a three-part series to pay tribute to Wilson's contributions to music in the '50s and '60s: Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love, Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads, and The Great American Songbook.
Nancy Wilson
Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny
Diva Nancy Wilson was among contemporary music's most stylish and sultry vocalists; while often crossing over into the pop and R&B markets -- and even hosting her own television variety program -- she remained best known as a jazz performer, renowned for her work alongside figures including Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH, Wilson first attracted notice performing the club circuit in nearby Columbus; she quickly earned a growing reputation among jazz players and fans, and she was recording regularly by the late '50s, eventually signing to Capitol and issuing LPs including 1959's Like in Love and Nancy Wilson with Billy May's Orchestra. Her dates with Shearing, including 1960's The Swingin's Mutual, solidified her standing as a talent on the rise, and her subsequent work with Adderley -- arguably her finest recordings -- further cemented her growing fame and reputation.
In the years to follow, however, Wilson often moved away from jazz, much to the chagrin of purists; she made numerous albums, many of them properly categorized as pop and R&B outings, and toured extensively, appearing with everyone from Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan to Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. She even hosted her own Emmy-winning variety series for NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show, and was a frequent guest performer on other programs; hits of the period included "Tell Me the Truth," "How Glad I Am," "Peace of Mind," and "Now, I'm a Woman." Regardless of how far afield she traveled, Wilson always maintained her connections to the jazz world, and in the 1980s, she returned to the music with a vengeance, working closely with performers including Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis, and Benny Golson. By the 1990s, she was a favorite among the "new adult contemporary" market, her style ideally suited to the format's penchant for lush, romantic ballads; she also hosted the Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio.
Meant to Be
In the early 2000s, Wilson recorded two albums with Ramsey Lewis for Narada (2002's Meant to Be and 2003's Simple Pleasures). Her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) was a blend of straight-ahead jazz and ballads, similar to her next record, 2006's Turned to Blue, which, like R.S.V.P., used a different instrumentalist for each track. In 2005, Capitol released a three-part series to pay tribute to Wilson's contributions to music in the '50s and '60s: Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love, Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads, and The Great American Songbook.
http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608002610/Nancy-Wilson.html
Nancy Wilson Biography
Nancy Wilson Biography
Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH; daughter of Olden and Lillian (Ryan) Wilson; married Kenneth C. Dennis (a drummer; divorced, 1970); married Wiley Burton (a minister), 1974; children: (first marriage) Kenneth "Kacy;" (second marriage) Samantha, Sheryl. Education: Attended Central State College in Wilberforce, OH, 1955. Memberships include Presidential Council for Minority Business Enterprises; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Operation PUSH (chairperson); United Negro College Fund; and Committee for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Addresses: Record company --Columbia Records, 2100 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; Management--c/o Devra Enterprises, 361 W. California Ave. 8, Glendale, CA 91203 Phone: (310) 449-2100.
African American jazz singer Nancy Wilson, known for her old-fashioned glamour and timeless, sultry voice, has become a legendary entertainer and enjoyed a career that has endured over 40 years. However, Wilson defied and resisted labels that many used to describe her style. Not only has she been a renowned jazz singer and balladeer, but she has also performed cabaret, sophisticated pop, and rhythm and blues. Placing her music in any one or all of such categories denies what Wilson felt her songs represented. "I'm a song-stylist--although I have been pigeonholed as a jazz singer," Wilson asserted in a 1994 cover story by Robert E. Johnson published in Jet magazine. And Essence magazine writer Audrey Edwards, in May of 1992, described the singer as "an artist of such enduring talent, class and elegance that she doesn't just defy the labels, she transcends them." Moreover, Wilson believed that her music cut across class and race. "I didn't know I was a `Black artist' until I was nominated for a Grammy in a Black category," she told continued. The music, rather than racial categories is "what people identify me with." With 60 albums to her name, beginning with her 1960 debut Like in Love through her 1997 release If I Had My Way, Wilson and her music have surpassed the longevity of most, garnering fans of all races and ages.
The oldest in a family of six children, Nancy Wilson was born on February 20, 1937, in the small southern Ohio town of Chillicothe, where she spent many of her formative years and where she attended Burnside Heights Elementary School. Wilson's parents, Olden and Lillian (Ryan) Wilson, were hard-working and raised their children in a close-knit environment. Her mother labored as a domestic, while her father worked in an iron foundry. Throughout her childhood, Wilson, along with her brothers Anthony and Michael and sisters Rita, Brenda, and Karen, often spent summers in the company of their grandmother at her home on Whiskey Run Road just outside of Columbus, Ohio. It was during these extended family get-togethers that Wilson first delighted audiences with her singing. A vocalist who never took part in formal voice training and often referred to her ability as a gift, Wilson realized at the tender age of four that her goal was to sing professionally.
In her hometown of Chillicothe and later in Columbus, where her family moved when Wilson reached her teens, she developed her skills singing in church choirs and emulating the styles of a variety of post-war American music. Some of her favorite musical legends included Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, LaVern Baker, Louis Jordan, Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, and her self-proclaimed greatest influence, "Little" Jimmy Scott. Wilson's own career began to take shape at the age of 15 after she won a local talent contest in Columbus and was awarded her own television series, Skyline Melodies, for a local station. The show, which was also broadcast on local radio, featured Wilson singing phoned-in requests. Even then, her repertoire included a wide range of musical styles, from jazz and big band to the pop, ballad, and torch song categories. In addition to performing on her television/radio show, Wilson started singing live shows everywhere she could at local clubs in and around Columbus.
Although continuing as an entertainer remained Wilson's primary goal, she decided to play it safe when she graduated in 1955 from West High School in Columbus, entering college in order to obtain her teaching credentials. However, after only one year as an education major at Ohio's Central State College, the singer dropped out in order to follow her original dreams, auditioning for and subsequently joining Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band in 1956. As the ensemble's female vocalist, Wilson spent much of the next three years touring the United States and Canada with the Carolyn Club Big Band. Her association with Bryant also produced her first, and now rare, recording for Dot Records.
In the meantime, while performing in Columbus, Wilson made another important connection that helped to build her career when she had the opportunity to sit in with jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who immediately sensed her enormous potential. Adderley, who would prove a major influence on Wilson's future in the recording business, convinced the talented singer to move away from the pop performance style and emphasize the more sophisticated jazz and ballad material. Taking Adderley's advice, the pair started performing together from time to time and later recorded an album together, 1962's Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley, which was recorded with Adderley's quintet and became a jazz classic.
Following her stint with Bryant's band, Wilson decided in 1959 to relocate to New York City, hoping to establish herself as a solo entertainer. Upon her arrival, she accepted a job as a secretary at the New York Institute of Technology, where she worked days in order to support herself until she got a break, and also started singing at clubs at night. More than anything, Wilson desperately wanted to record for one of the most respected labels of the day, Capitol Records, though she realized the possibility of waiting months or even years to earn such an offer. However, with only four weeks under her belt in New York, Wilson received her first important assignment: to fill in for singer Irene Reid at an established nightclub. That evening, Wilson gave such a stellar performance that the club owner wanted to book the singer on a permanent basis. Still holding on to her secretarial job to supplement her income, Wilson sang four nights a week at the nightclub, and the public, as well as record producers and agents, quickly took notice. One night, John Levy, a well-known figure in the music business and manager to Adderley, came to the club to hear her sing. Because of her friendship with Adderley, not to mention her undeniable talent, Levy offered his help and set about arranging a session to record a demonstration tape. He would continue to manage Wilson's affairs throughout her entertainment career.
At the scheduled session, Wilson recorded the songs "Guess Who I Saw Today" and "Sometimes I'm Happy." Within a week after Levy sent the tapes to Capitol Records, Wilson had signed a contract with the label. Capitol, known for its outstanding roster of singers who performed the standard ballad repertoire, proved a fortunate first home for Wilson. Suddenly, she found herself in the company of world-renowned stars like Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Peggy Lee, in addition to some of the industry's most cherished lyricists and composers. Her first album for Capitol, Like in Love, arrived in April of 1960, and she scored her first hit with a rhythm and blues song recorded with Adderley entitled "Save Your Love for Me" in 1962.
Also that year, Capitol released her second album, Something Wonderful, which included one of the songs used on her demo tape "Guess Who I Saw Today." Although only a moderate hit at the time of its release, "Guess Who I Saw Today," a song about infidelity, remained her most requested number well into the late 1990s and became her signature song. "It is one of those experiences everybody can relate to," she explained to Stewart Weiner in a 1999 interview for Palm Springs Life magazine. Wilson's audience further broadened the following year with the song "Tell Me the Truth," and between April of 1960 and July of 1962, Capitol issued five of the singer's albums. These early accomplishments set a frenetic pace for Wilson and her first husband, drummer Kenny Dennis, who married in 1960. Before long, Wilson found herself performing more than 40 weeks out of the year, at times giving two shows a night at top clubs such as the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles and the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
By the mid-1960s, Wilson was one of her label's best-selling artist, second only to the Beatles. An uninhibited performer who included jazz-styled pop in her repertoire and proudly displayed her glamorous good looks, she even surpassed established entertainers such as Cole, Lee, and the popular West Coast rock and roll group the Beach Boys in sales. In 1964, she won a Grammy Award for best rhythm and blues recording for the album How Glad I Am. Four other Grammy nominations since followed this honor, including a nomination for Gentle Is My Love in 1965. As 1966 approached, Wilson was earning a generous income in excess of $1 million per year, and her rise in popularity showed no sign of slowing down. In addition to enjoying stardom in the United States, she had also established a significant fanbase overseas, especially in Japan, where she would remain a favorite for years to come.
As a result of her recognized depth and diverse talent, Wilson saw other opportunities within the entertainment industry arise. From the mid-1960s and 1970s, the singer headlined shows in Las Vegas that had been booked two years in advance, performed at the most sophisticated supper clubs, and received offers for television work. During the 1967-68 season, she hosted her own top-rated television program on NBC called The Nancy Wilson Show, for which she won an Emmy Award. All the while, Wilson maintained a seamless string of hit records, repeatedly garnering top honors for both Billboard and Playboy magazine's music polls.
Despite her efforts to juggle a family, constant touring and recording, and a television career, Wilson's busy schedule took a toll on her personal life. In 1970, Wilson divorced her first husband, with whom she had one son, Kenneth (Kacy) Dennis, Jr., in 1963, and that same year married Reverend Wiley Burton. Wilson had two more children with her second husband, daughters Samantha Burton, born in 1975, and Sheryl Burton, born in 1976. Learning from past experiences, Wilson curtailed her professional engagements somewhat after marrying Burton. In 1973, for example, she opted not to perform in supper clubs, although she did perform concert dates in South America and Japan. Nonetheless, her decision to focus on her family made little if any impact on her stardom. In fact, Wilson herself believed that performing less actually improved her shows, noting that not playing in the same venue for two to four weeks straight gave a freshness and excitement to her singing. In the mid-1970s, Wilson and Burton bought a home--which grew to occupy over 17,000 square feet by late 1999--140 miles away from Los Angeles in the California high desert. Wilson moved to the rural location Pioneertown, made famous as the background landscape for the Roy Rogers television series, to raise her children.
As the next decade approached, many record companies, especially those involved with pop and rhythm and blues artists, started using technical enhancements for album production. Wilson, who preferred to record her songs live, resisted such innovations that might alter the sound of her voice and never wanted to release a record that she was unable to perform before an audience. Therefore, since most labels in the United States declined to meet her standards, Wilson spent the 1980s primarily recording for Japanese labels. "They've allowed me to sing so that I can sing," she told Jet magazine in 1986. "I can't sing for a splice in the middle. I say `We'll do it from the top until you get what you want.' The day the music died, is the day when they stopped recording live, they started doing things you can't reproduce live." She expressed a similar, though somewhat more resigned, sentiment later in 1999. "When we were recording those Capitol albums, all of the musicians were in the same room playing," she recalled to Weiner. "Now, you record all by yourself with headphones on." Without losing her fans in the United States, Wilson further endeared herself to legions of Japanese jazz enthusiasts during these years. In 1983, she was declared the winner of the annual Tokyo Song Festival and released a total of five acclaimed albums for Japanese labels. Back in the United States, Wilson started recording for Columbia Records as well, beginning in 1984 with a collaborative effort, The Two of Us, that also featured pianist/keyboardist Ramsey Lewis.
With her children grown, Wilson found more time to devote to her career during the 1990s. In addition to maintaining a busy touring and recording schedule and expanding her acting interests, she was honored in 1990 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Around the same time, she worked on a landmark album of previously unpublished lyrics by legendary songwriter Johnny Mercer set to the music of co-producer Barry Manilow. The Mercer tribute album, With My Lover Beside Me, was released in 1991. Several other albums followed, including her fifty-fourth full-length recording, a collection of love songs entitled Love, Nancy, released in 1994, as well as her sixtieth album, If I Had My Way, released in 1997. In 1998, Wilson received a Playboy readers poll award for best female jazz vocalist and resumed her radio career by hosting the National Public Radio (NPR) Jazz Profiles series. That same year, Wilson suffered the loss of both her parents, who both died in November of 1998. Wilson continued to work steadily through this time, which she referred to as the most difficult year of her life. The following year, Wilson honored one of jazz music's most legendary singers, Ella Fitzgerald, when she hosted a biography television special entitled Forever Ella, which aired on the A & E cable television network.
Wilson took advantage of other opportunities in both television and film. Her film roles included Robert Townsend's Meteor Man and The Big Score, with Fred Williamson and Richard Roundtree. She appeared on The Sinbad Show and in a recurring role in the number one-rated series The Cosby Show. Her other work in television series included guest roles for I Spy, Room 222, Police Story, O'Hara: U.S. Treasury, The F.B.I., and Hawaii Five-O. Some of her other television appearances included performances for The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Today Show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, The Flip Wilson Show, The Andy Wilson Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. Her own television special, Nancy Wilson in Concert, aired in 1989, and the singer made frequent appearances on both The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dimes Telethon.
Throughout her years as an entertainer, Wilson devoted considerable time and money to numerous charitable causes, such as the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, the Cancer Society, the Minority Aids Project, the National Urban Coalition, and the Warwick Foundation. Organizations that honored Wilson for her dedication included the United Negro College Fund, the Urban League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her family also established the Nancy Wilson Foundation to enable inner-city children to visit the country and experience alternate lifestyles. She earned an honorary degree from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, for her contributions to music, and although she never finished college, Central State College presented her with an honorary degree, an accolade that reflects the teacher that she really was in her song and compassionate nature. In 1992, the Urban League presented Wilson with the Whitney Young Jr. Award, while Essence magazine rated the singer as one of jazz music's current "grand divas."
During her prolific and enduring career as an entertainer, Wilson witnessed the dramatic changes within the music industry. "It's now a record industry--whereas the business before emphasized nightclub performing, concerts, television appearances as well as recording records," she said to Edwards, recalling the entertainment industry of times past. Although she misses the era that gave birth to what many call the "real singers," like Joyce Bryant, Lena Horne, and Wilson herself, she insisted that the modern times have produced talent as well. "I love Oleta Adams," Wilson continued. "And Regina Belle, Anita Baker, Phyllis Hyman. These women have a lot of power and are doing some meaty material. The music is good." In addition, Wilson's daughters have introduced their mother to hip-hop artists such as Mary J. Blige, who she also came to admire. Nonetheless, Wilson looked back on her days with Capitol with a sense of nostalgia. "It was the wonder years there," she told Weiner. "Look at the artists who were recording for Capitol: Nat King Cole, Dakota Stanton, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin And, of course, Frank Sinatra!" When asked what made the label so different, Wilson replied, "It was owned by Johnny Mercer," she explained. "And there was such a feeling of family." However, Wilson adapted with her usual grace and eased into the 1990s and beyond, bringing her stylish music to a whole new generation. Now entering into her fifth decade as a professional singer, Wilson planned to record and perform for many years to come, singing songs that have stood the test of time.
by Laura Hightower
Nancy Wilson's Career
Sang in church choirs and clubs, Columbus, OH, early 1950s; star of local television show, Skyline Melodies, Columbus, OH, 1952-54; member of Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band, 1956-58; released first album, Like in Love, for Capitol Records, 1959; hosted The Nancy Wilson Show, 1967-68; released sixtieth album, If I Had My Way, 1997. Made numerous appearances on variety shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Flip Wilson Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show, and The Arsenio Hall Show; guest starred on numerous television series; had roles in the films The Big Score and Meteor Man. Cofounder, Nancy Wilson Foundation, which introduces inner-city youth to rural settings.
Nancy Wilson's Awards
Grammy Award, 1964, for How Glad I Am; Emmy Award, 1975, for The Nancy Wilson Show; winner, Tokyo Song Festival, 1983; Global Entertainer of the Year, World Conference of Mayors, 1986; Image Award, NAACP, 1986; star, Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1990; Essence Award, Essence magazine, 1992; Whitney Young Jr. Award, Urban League, 1992; Martin Luther King Center for Social Change Award, 1993; Turner Broadcasting Trumpet Award for Outstanding Achievement, 1994.
Famous Works
Selected discography
Like in Love , Capitol, 1960.
Something Wonderful , 1960.
The Swingin's Mutual , 1961.
Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley , Capitol, 1962.
Hello Young Lovers , 1962.
Broadway--My Way , 1963.
Hollywood--My Way , 1963.
Yesterday's Love Songs, Today's Blues , 1963.
Today, Tomorrow, Forever , 1964.
How Glad I Am , 1964.
The Nancy Wilson Show at the Coconut Grove , 1965.
Nancy Wilson Today--My Way , 1965.
Gentle Is My Love , 1965.
From Broadway With Love , 1966.
A Touch of Love Today , 1966.
Tender Loving Care , 1966.
Nancy--Naturally , 1966.
Just for Now , 1967.
Lush Life , 1967.
Welcome to My Love , 1968.
Easy , 1968.
The Best of Nancy Wilson , 1968.
Sound of Nancy Wilson , 1968.
Nancy , 1969.
Son of a Preacher Man , 1969.
Close Up , 1969.
Hurt So Bad , 1969.
Can't Take My Eyes Off You , 1970.
Now I'm a Woman , 1970.
Double Play , 1971.
Right to Love , 1971.
I Know I Love Him , 1973.
All in Love Is Fair , 1974.
Come Get to This , 1975.
This Mother's Daughter , Capitol, 1976.
I've Never Been to Me , 1977.
Music on My Mind , 1978.
Life, Love and Harmony , 1979.
Take My Love , 1980.
At My Best , ASI Records, 1981.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95307007
Updated December 12, 2012
Published October 3, 2008
Embed: <iframe src="http://www.npr.org/player/embed/95307007/95282146" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
Set List:
"Almost Like Being in Love" (Lerner, Loewe)
"But Beautiful" (Burke, Van Heusen)
"Easy Living" (Rainger, Robin)
"Twilight World" (McPartland)
"Green Dolphin Street" (Kaper)
"When October Goes" (Manilow, Mercer)
"The Nearness of You" (Carmichael, Washington)
"All in Love Is Fair" (S. Wonder)
"I Thought About You" (Mercer, VanHeusen)
Nancy Wilson was born in 1937 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Her vocal talents began attracting attention when, at age 15, she won a talent show in Columbus in which the prize was a twice-a-week television program. In addition to the TV show, Wilson began a regular gig with Rusty Bryant's band and sat in with the major jazz acts that came through nearby Columbus. Cannonball Adderley was particularly fond of her singing, and this meeting eventually led to a recording contract with Capitol Records and a series of releases with Billy Mays' Orchestra, George Shearing and Adderley.
Wilson eventually branched out and began recording music that made inroads into pop and R&B. She toured with artists such as Nat King Cole, LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown and Sarah Vaughan. She also found a niche in television, and after many guest appearances, she was given her own Emmy-winning variety program, The Nancy Wilson Show.
After many successful years with Capitol, where her sales were often second only to The Beatles, Wilson moved to Columbia in the 1980s. While she continued to perform and record pop music, she also recorded a string of solid jazz albums and performed with the likes of Ramsey Lewis, Benny Golson and Hank Jones. In addition, her forays into pop made her a favorite on radio stations playing the "new adult contemporary" format in the 1990s.
Wilson's knowledge of music and her personal relationships with jazz musicians made her the perfect host for the NPR series Jazz Profiles.
Originally recorded Aug. 3, 1993.
Originally broadcast Jan. 15, 1994.
Web Resources
Purchase Music
http://jazztimes.com/articles/14910-nancy-wilson-how-glad-we-are-for-the-grace-of
Nancy Wilson: How Glad We Are for the Grace of...
September 2004
by Christopher Loudon
JazzTimes
Of the innumerable female jazz vocalists who have stepped up to the mike throughout the past half-century, I'd credit Anita O'Day with the finest-tuned jazz sensibility and place Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald in a photo finish for most musically accomplished. Yet Nancy Wilson remains my hands-down favorite. "Do you mind me asking why?" inquires the legendary 67-year-old, less with incredulity than genuine interest, when I mention my longstanding infatuation.
It's not an easy question to answer.
There is, of course, Wilson's unique blend of diamondlike clarity, flawless enunciation and whispered smokiness, which, spanning some five-dozen albums, consistently suggests Dinah Washington enveloped in sable. Then there's her innate elegance-a stunning combination of sophistication and natural beauty that, to borrow a sentiment from one of her best tracks, always leaves us breathless. Equally important are her tremendously high standards, as uncompromising as Tony Bennett's, when it comes to selecting material ("If I don't like it, I'm not singing it," she firmly states), and a remarkable dexterity that finds her equally at ease (and equally in command) with silky standards, peppy pop tunes and grittier R&B fare. Not to be overlooked are her exquisite taste in arrangers and musical partners (extending from Ben Webster to Ramsey Lewis) or her unswerving loyalty (just ask manager John Levy, who's been with Wilson since 1959, or publicist Lynn Coles, who's been her friend and champion nearly as long).
Actually, though, the allure of Nancy Wilson can be summed up in just one word: effortlessness. It is both her charm and her curse. She manages, much like the perennially underappreciated Doris Day, to make it all seem too easy; as a result generating huge popularity among record buyers and concertgoers and enormous indifference from critics. In his hefty tome Jazz Singing, noted historian Will Friedwald sings the praises of everyone from Bing Crosby to Della Reese. Within the book's 477 pages, Wilson is mentioned a grand total of once, and then only to dismiss her as "less interesting" than Dakota Staton. Other, equally respected observers have likewise politely (and, a la Day, inaccurately) credited her as a pleasant lightweight. Not surprisingly, her peers are better attuned to her exceptionality. In a recent Down Beat poll, 73 singers-such masters as Mark Murphy, Andy Bey, Kurt Elling, Dianne Reeves and Cassandra Wilson among them-were asked to name the greatest vocal jazz albums of all time. The most votes rightly, if unexpectedly, went to 1961's Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, placing Wilson seven notches above Ella Fitzgerald's highest entry and nine above Sarah Vaughan's.
But Wilson herself has never been comfortable with the jazz moniker. "I'm a song stylist and a storyteller," she insists. "My songs are little vignettes. If a lyric doesn't have a story to tell, who cares how great the melody is? I know if I'd originally been put out there as a jazz singer I would never have accomplished the things I have."
Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, but raised 50 miles due north in Columbus, Wilson made her professional debut in 1952, at age 15, headlining a local, twice-per-week TV show called Skyline Melodies. Finishing high school and entering college, she signed on for two years of club dates and touring with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club combo, cutting her first record in 1956 as featured vocalist on a long-forgotten ditty called "Don't Tell Me." Convinced she'd find more work as a solo artist, she quit both Bryant's band and college, reasoning, "I was making more money on weekends singing off campus than I could ever make with a degree, and I was going to the wrong school for what I really wanted to do, which was something in medicine. So, the music kind of took over."
One fateful evening in 1958, Wilson was enjoying a rare night off, sitting in with the band at Columbus' 502 Club when in strolled sax giant Cannonball Adderley. As the alto saxophonist is quoted in Wilson's 1996 box set Ballads, Blues, & Big Bands, the singer was performing some "unrehearsed, off-the-top-of-the-head stuff." Adderley became smitten, recognizing that "this young kid had so much to offer-tone, style, confidence-I felt she had a long way to go." And go she did, directly to New York.
Demonstrating maturity rare among 22-year-olds, Wilson landed in Manhattan determined to have "John Levy manage me and Dave Cavanaugh produce me at Capitol Records. That was my plan, and I got it all in five weeks!" she says. "I knew that John was a decent human being. I'd heard nothing but good things about him and knew that he would understand what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a cross between Lena Horne and Dinah Washington and play the good rooms. I didn't want to be playing in sawdust. I thought it might be a great crossover opportunity for John, allowing him to get out of the strictly jazz field, and it was a great chance for me to have a manager who gave a damn."
In Shirley MacLaine's biographical nightclub number "Remember Me?" she sings "on Carol Haney's broken leg I rode to fame," referring to her role as Broadway understudy to Haney in The Pajama Game and a chance accident that found her subbing for the leading lady on opening night and subsequently dazzling the critics.
Nancy Wilson can make a remarkably similar claim.
Two weeks after arriving in New York, Wilson was invited to sub for headliner Irene Reid at the Blue Morocco in the Bronx after the star suffered a broken limb. In wandered John Levy. Levy led her to Cavanaugh who promptly offered a contract and, on December 7, 1959, Wilson found herself inside the fabled Capitol studios at Hollywood and Vine recording her debut album, Like in Love, with renowned arranger-conductor Billy May. "Billy was a fabulous man, just fabulous," Wilson enthuses. "He could get down in the cracks and raise some serious dust."
At the time, Wilson couldn't have found a more suitable home. Cofounded by singer-songwriter Johnny Mercer in the mid-'40s, Capitol wasn't yet one of the majors (that would come with the addition to their roster of four lads from Liverpool) when she climbed aboard, but the company was renowned for its care and expertise with vocalists, having nurtured Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, the Four Freshmen and Keely Smith. "For me," says Wilson, "there wasn't a better record company in the world; and Dave Cavanaugh was such a jewel, an absolute doll baby. If I'd ended up at Riverside or one of the other jazz labels, I don't think that within three years I'd have been playing the Coconut Grove and the Fairmont in San Francisco and the Imperial Room in Toronto."
Though not a massive, out-of-the-box hit, Like in Love sold respectably and, recalls Wilson, "the second one [Something Wonderful, featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax and just recently reissued on CD] did better, the third [with Adderley] did better than that, as did the fourth [her landmark union with the George Shearing Quintet, The Swingin's Mutual!]." Yet, inspired as the pairings with Adderley and Shearing may have been, they were also musical marriages of convenience. "It was so easy," says Wilson, "because George was signed to Capitol and was represented by John Levy. Cannonball, too, was with John. The stable was mean-absolutely fantastic. It was really hard not to make it because you were surrounded by such talent."
By 1963, Wilson, now a staple of the best supper clubs and top TV variety shows, was well along the path to stardom. That year, it was the matched set of gems Broadway-My Way and Hollywood-My Way, both arranged by pianist Jimmy Jones, that, along with 1964's massive "How Glad I Am" (the only significant single of Wilson's purposefully album-oriented career and a song that, she says, "everybody was opposed to, but I insisted"), elevated her into the pop-jazz stratosphere.
Interestingly, Wilson's ascension paralleled the rosy, all-American optimism of the Camelot era. Indeed, she was the Jackie Kennedy of jazz-cool, elegant, sophisticated and smart, with a backbone of pure steel hidden beneath designer gowns. Her signature tune at the time was the mini-saga "Guess Who I Saw Today" (included on Something Wonderful), a melodramatic evocation of marital discord in the cocktail-fueled, Kennedy-loving suburbs. Which raises the question: Was Wilson, alongside Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and Herb Alpert, then perhaps the quintessential suburban artiste? Absolutely, which should in no way be perceived as condemnation. She was the vocal equivalent of a well-crafted bestseller; and, just as the three Johns-O'Hara, Updike and Cheever-helped the subdivision set learn to appreciate great literature, Wilson (together with Nat Cole and Peggy Lee) took vocal jazz out of the penthouses and into the middle classes.
Even at her earthiest Wilson was never as gritty as soul sisters like Aretha Franklin and Cissy Houston, and she didn't speak to or for the masses, reserving her messages for the Oldsmobile and Canadian Club crowd. Around the same time that Franklin was earning the nation's respect, Wilson was serving up satin-lined covers of pop-lite hits like "You've Got Your Troubles" and "Sunny" and reteaming with Billy May for the gorgeously plush Lush Life, which she still considers her all-time favorite. The album's highlight is Wilson's definitive version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," a song she considers, "the hardest I've ever sung. There's this one little passage in there that is very, very difficult. We tried to record it one night-it was the last tune we were going to do-and I just couldn't get it, so we stopped at 11, and I went home and had nightmares!"
Wilson also tried her hand at television, attempting to emulate the small screen success of Andy Williams and Dean Martin with NBC's The Nancy Wilson Show, which, though it lasted only a single season, earned her an Emmy. (Subsequent guest roles on small screen hits as diverse as Hawaii Five-0, Police Story and The Cosby Show proved Wilson an extremely capable dramatic and comedic actress, comparable to an amalgam of Diahann Carroll and Phylicia Rashad.)
As America's dream of a suburban utopia started turning nightmarish in the early '70s, Wilson became more musically daring, swapping urbane for genuinely urban and augmenting standards and pop ditties with bluesier, more distinctly soulful material. Albums like Now I'm a Woman, This Mother's Daughter and Life, Love and Harmony mixed some gristle into her creamy gravy, demonstrating that, as Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall later observed, she was "a great improviser who goes beyond any category."
Ultimately, she would remain at Capitol for fully two decades, outlasting even the stalwart Lee, delivering some three dozen albums, and regularly ranking directly behind the Beatles in the company's annual sales tallies. (The label's Hollywood tower may have been known as "the house that Nat built," but surely Wilson financed most of the fittings and furnishings.)
While at Capitol, she was paired with top arrangers like May and Oliver Nelson ("I miss Oliver so," she laments. "I wish he'd lived a little longer because I had about four or five more albums to do with him"), but also encouraged lesser-known talents, including Gerald Wilson and Jimmy Jones. "It wasn't," she says, "like we had to fight for these people. I wanted Gerald. I wanted Jimmy. So did Dave [Cavanaugh]. We wanted stuff that was good but was still fresh." Remarkably, Wilson was never teamed with Nelson Riddle. Would, perhaps, the grandiosity of the trademark Riddle sound have been a bit overwhelming for her? "Nah," she laughs, "I could have shot it like it was a cracker. Nelson would have been so easy. It would have been like working out with a symphony-a piece of cake. But I don't know that it was what I wanted. Nelson was marvelous, but it wasn't for me-a little too hard-edged, I think."
After parting ways with Capitol, Wilson found herself, like so many of her peers, "unable to get a major label here. So, I signed with Sony in Japan." Four year later, following Sony's takeover of Columbia, her recording career returned stateside. "Columbia was great," says Wilson, though she admits, "They kept saying they didn't know how to market me, and I'd say, 'Come on, people, let's just go in and do a damn R&B tune. I'm not taking my clothes off and I'm not shakin' my butt, but I will give you great songs that can go either way.' I tell you, I've been blessed. God gave me a gift and I've chosen to use it wisely, but he didn't give me a love of the business."
Creative differences aside, Wilson's decade-long association with Columbia ignited a third career wave, marked by a reversion to the smoother style that defined her earliest recordings coupled with a keen appreciation for material beyond the Great American Songbook. Exquisite achievements from this period include her 1984 teaming with Ramsey Lewis for The Two of Us and, most notably, 1991's With My Lover Beside Me featuring obscure Johnny Mercer lyrics newly set to music by Barry Manilow. "That came about when I met a producer in an elevator in Japan," remembers Wilson. "He mentioned Mercer, said, 'Might you be interested?' and the first person I thought of was Barry Manilow. I still think he has the best commercial ear of anyone I know. He is a dynamite performer and writes beautifully-and simplistically. It's never overkill with Barry. It's just nice."
Wilson's post-Columbia recording schedule has, by choice, slowed considerably but includes two superb reunions with Lewis-2002's Meant to Be and last year's Simple Pleasures, the latter featuring a soaring version of "God Bless the Child" that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a half-century of recording and touring has done nothing to diminish her vocal beauty or authority. More of her time has been devoted to a different kind of voice work, as the impressively knowledgeable and articulate host of NPR's Jazz Profiles. To date, the weekly series has showcased more than 100 seminal jazz figures, many Wilson's personal friends, and explored such intriguing themes as women in jazz, the rigors of touring and the post-millennial struggle to sustain the vitality of jazz. Indeed, practically the only key player who's never been feted on the program is Wilson herself.
Wilson's latest disc, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal), on Pittsburgh's nonprofit MCG (Manchester Craftsmen's Guild) label, is intended to celebrate her 50th anniversary in show business, though as she wryly observes, "It's really been 52." Echoing the sentiment of Sinatra's late-career Some Nice Things I've Missed, the album is, she says, themed around "songs I adore but never got the chance to sing. It's a real mixed bag."
As the title suggests, each of the dozen tracks has a deeper, more intimate resonance for Wilson. "Little Green Apples," the late O.C. Smith's sweet paean to marital satisfaction, was included because, "O.C. was my pastor, so it is my tribute to him." Leonard and Martin's "Why Did I Choose You," a dreamy duet with Kenny Lattimore, honors Marvin Gaye, from whom Wilson first heard the song "back in the days when Marvin wanted to be a balladeer." Irving Berlin's haunting "How About Me" is, she adds, "because of Russell Malone. I heard him play it, and the tears just rolled down my face. I didn't have a clue what the song was or if it had lyrics, but I just fell in love with it and knew someday I had to sing it." Johnny Mandel's "I Wish I'd Met You," cowritten with Richard Rodney Bennett and Franklin Underwood, is, she sighs, "just such a beautiful story"; Lee Wing's sassy "An Older Man (Is Like an Elegant Wine)," featuring solos by Toots Thielemans and Phil Woods, was added because, Wilson coyly suggests, "I'm getting up in age now and trying to explain to people the delights of an older man. I love it! It's a throwback to the 1950s-a Blossom Dearie kinda thing." Elsewhere, Wilson teams once each with Ivan Lins and Gary Burton (the latter on the oft-covered "That's All," which she was at first hesitant to do until she "heard Jay Ashby's arrangement, which has a different little treatment"), and goes to town with the All-Star Big Band on both "Day In, Day Out" and "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart." The album's cornerstone, though, is Wilson's first studio reunion with George Shearing since The Swingin's Mutual!, for which she chose "Blame It on My Youth" because, she giggles, "you know I'm 67 now, so it seemed like an opportune time to sing it."
Ever since news of R.S.V.P. surfaced, rumors have been flying that Wilson, recently added to the National Endowment of the Arts' elite list of Jazz Masters, is ready to hang up her skates. "I doubt," she speculates, "that this is my last album, but I'm getting very close to my last appearance. I'm not going to record anymore with Ramsey. We have three out, and he and I have had a lot of fun, but neither of us wants to work that much any more!"
After a half-century in the spotlight, will retirement sit well with her? Absolutely, she insists, emphasizing, "Singing is not my life. My life is my husband and my kids and their kids. I have four grandsons. My husband says, 'You give everything to those boys,' and I say, 'Well, that's what life is all about.' In terms of my career, I've never been out there totally. I remember once realizing that I knew precisely where I'd be for the next two years and told [my management], 'This is not what I came out here to do. Back off, because I cannot live like this and I don't want it to that degree.' It's only wonderful when you can do it and love it. And you can't love it if you're doing it every day or sacrificing you're children to it. Fortunately, I've been able to cross that bar. I'm most thankful that I've always been able to keep the love of my family; most thankful that my mother and father and aunts and uncles and husband and kids never lost sight of who I was and loved me. I could always go home."
http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/jazz-nancy-wilson-1960s/
Jazz Her Way: Nancy Wilson In The 1960s
by DAVID BRENT JOHNSON
July 6, 2015
Indiana Public Media
Singer Nancy Wilson arrived in the twilight years of the jazz and popular song’s mid-20th-century golden age and managed to establish herself as one of the era’s most successful and prolific artists,
Nancy Wilson, jazz singer–that simple description is one that Wilson sometimes eschewed in the 1960s, and one that jazz critics of the era sometimes were reluctant to apply as well. Looking back now, though, and listening to the records she made with Cannonball Adderley, Hank Jones, George Shearing, Gerald Wilson, and others, it seems indisputable. But Wilson’s sound did indeed transcend genres; as jazz blogger Marc Myers has noted, “Her polite, sultry style, her confident phrasing, and her exciting delivery paved the way for Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and so many other female pop and soul vocalists.” Her narrative drive and tone also expanded her appeal beyond jazz audiences; at the height of her success in the 1960s, Time Magazine wrote that “She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller.” What Nancy Wilson sang in those years was jazz her way.
“Crisp And Clear As A Bell”
Wilson was born in Ohio in 1937 and grew up outside of Columbus, one of six children. Little Jimmy Scott, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan were all influences in her youth, and at age 15 she began singing on a local television show. She dropped out of college in 1956 and performed for two years with Rusty Bryant’s big band, then met saxophonist Cannonball Adderley in New York City, “at the corner of 52nd Street and Broadway, what a cliché,” as she laughingly told Myers in 2010. Adderley would prove instrumental in promoting Wilson’s career, introducing her to his agent, John Levy, and eventually recording a landmark album with her. After working as a telephone operator and secretary, singing in nightclubs in the evenings, and briefly moving back to Ohio, Wilson finally began to make albums under her own name for Capitol Records, scoring an early hit with “Guess Who I Saw Today,” which would become one of her signature songs.
Wilson arrived in the twilight years of the jazz and popular song’s mid-20th-century golden age and managed to establish herself as one of the field’s most successful and prolific artists of the 1960s, with an engaging sound that eluded genre definition, blending big-band and small-group elements with pop orchestration and doses of soul that could be both big-city hip and suburban cool. Still, jazz was almost always a primary ingredient in her mix. Her second album, Something Wonderful, found her in the veteran company of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and arranger Billy May, and her third album brought her together with pianist George Shearing, whose long-popular quintet provided a lightly-swinging and inviting backdrop for the young singer. The two formed an easy musical camaraderie, and further demonstrated their simpatico amiability in a blindfold test for Leonard Feather in a 1961 issue of DownBeat. Feather praised their album, The Swingin’s Mutual, as “one of the most logical and successful collaborations of the last year.”
Not all of the reception for The Swingin’s Mutual was positive; DownBeat reviewer Barbara Gardner gave the album a lukewarm review, criticizing what she called Shearing’s “thoroughly-stylized society piano group,” but praised Wilson’s singing, saying
Here are pipes tailor-made for good, emotion-charged blasting and withering story-telling. Her voice is crisp and clear as a bell. It can stand out over the instrumentation or it can melt into the group. Her diction and enunciation are perfect without sounding pedantic. Her tone is sharp without that piercing, cutting edge that plagues so many female vocalists.
Ebony Star
Wilson’s next album teamed her up with the musician who helped launch her career in 1959—-saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who had worked with Miles Davis, helped bring other talents such as guitarist Wes Montgomery into the limelight, and was now leading his own prominent soul-jazz group. The recording Wilson and Adderley made has become a jazz vocal classic, and it spawned a hit song, a cover of Buddy Johnson’s 1955 composition “Save Your Love For Me,” frequently covered by jazz singers today on the strength of Wilson and Adderley’s 1961 recording.
The Shearing and Adderley collaborations helped make Wilson a star on the rise in the early 1960s, and in December of 1963 she landed a profile in the pages of Ebony, black America’s answer to Life Magazine. “Nancy’s fame today is spreading like a wind-swept fire in a dry California canyon,” the article proudly proclaimed:
She sings to devotees in New York’s Basin Street East, Chicago’s Mr. Kelly’s, Hollywood’s Crescendo, the Carib-Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Waldorf in Santiago, Chile, the Copacabana in Rio de Janiero, and other spots from Detroit to Venezuela.
In addition to images of the singer at home in Los Angeles with her husband Kenny Dennis, who was also her drummer at the time, and their child and dog, the article also included photographs of her collaborating with yet another notable jazz figure, big bandleader and arranger Gerald Wilson, for an album called Yesterday’s Love Songs–Today’s Blues. Dubbed “loud and swinging” by modern-day critic Will Friedwald, the record also showcased Wilson’s perennial strength with a ballad on “Never Let Me Go.”
Wilson’s Hollywood Way
Wilson was a dynamic live performer whose visual appeal drew on more than just her attractive looks; she had a natural theatrical flair and a comfort on camera that led to numerous television appearances in the 1960s and beyond. “Audiences want to see a song as well as hear it,” she told Marc Myers in 2010. A 1965 DownBeat review by Leonard Feather of a concert at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles with Gerald Wilson praised the “extraordinary demonstration of the attainment, by a splendid singer, of an almost unprecedented mixture of commercial appeal, physical and musical charm, and artistic integrity.” We’ll hear an example of Wilson performing live around this time, as part of an all-star 1964 extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl put on to help oppose a California state ballot initiative that would nullify the state legislature’s attempts to end discrimination in housing. It was just one of many activities that Wilson participated in to help the civil-rights movement. Though the initiative passed, it was later overturned by the California Supreme Court.
Hollywood figured in another Wilson project of this period, Hollywood My Way, an LP of songs drawn from movies, which had been preceded by another thematic album, called Broadway My Way. Wilson was beginning to venture more often into the era’s contemporary pop repertorie, but she would stay heavily invested in standards as well–and in these years Broadway and the movies were still contributing new songs that would become standards.
“A Song Stylist”
As the 1960s progressed Wilson stayed in the spotlight, both as a singer and a popular-culture figure on television. She was featured once again in the pages of Ebony, in a May 1966 profile with the headline, “Pretty singing star is businesswoman with her feet firmly on the ground.” And that was perhaps key to the image of Wilson in these turbulent years, as a singer who could embody big-city hip and suburban cool and sound somehow engaged and reassuring at the same time—-emotionally alive, but in control. The article also highlighted her television appearances, domestic life, and emblems of success such as her home and swimming pool.
By now Wilson was cutting down her time on the road, and continuing to downplay any jazz-singer labels, but she continued a prolific recording schedule for Capitol Records, with jazz gems among them such as her collaborations with arrangers Billy May and Oliver Nelson. As the 1960s ended she made one last jazz-centered recording, in a quartet setting with pianist Hank Jones. With the arrival of the 1970s, her music would take a soul-pop turn, and jazz truly would disappear from her sound, though she would return to it in later years. She appeared on numerous TV shows, and she also became familiar to many NPR listeners in the 1990s as the host of Jazz Profiles. She still displayed ambivalence towards the jazz singer label, telling Marc Myers, “I just tell people I’m a song stylist. A song stylist allows me the freedom to sing anything I want. If the lyrics and melody please me, then that should be the only criteria for what I choose to sing.”
Jazz Her Way, Extended
Read Marc Myers’ 2010 interview with Nancy Wilson
Hear Wilson in the previous Night Lights show Jazz Women Of The 1960s
Watch Nancy Wilson on a 1962 episode of Jazz Scene USA:
Nancy Wilson talking to Leonard Feather in 1961 during a DownBeat blindfold test:
Music Heard On This Episode:
David Brent Johnson
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Brent Johnson moved to Bloomington in 1991. He is an alumnus of Indiana University, and began working with WFIU in 2002. Currently, David serves as jazz producer and systems coordinator at the station. His interests include literature, history, music, writing, and movies.
https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/nancy-wilson
NEA Jazz Masters
Nancy Wilson
Vocalist, Broadcaster
2004 NEA Jazz Master
Born on February 20, 1937 in Chillicothe, OH
Interview
Nancy Wilson first found her voice singing in church choirs, but found her love of jazz in her father's record collection. It included albums by Jimmy Scott, Nat "King" Cole, Billy Eckstine, Dinah Washington, and Ruth Brown; this generation of vocalists had a profound influence on Wilson's singing style. She began performing on the Columbus, Ohio, club circuit while still in high school, and in 1956 she became a member of Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Band.
She also sat in with various performers, such as Cannonball Adderley, who suggested that she come to New York. When Wilson took his advice, her distinctive voice enchanted a representative from Capitol Records and she was signed in 1959. In the years that followed, Wilson recorded 37 original albums for the label. Her first hit, "Guess Who I Saw Today," came in 1961. One year later, a collaborative album with Adderley solidified her standing in the jazz community and provided the foundation for her growing fame and career. During her years with Capitol, she was second in sales only to the Beatles, surpassing Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, and even Nat "King" Cole.
Wilson also has worked in television, where in 1968 she won an Emmy Award for her NBC series, The Nancy Wilson Show. She has performed on The Andy Williams Show and The Carol Burnett Show and has appeared in series such as Hawaii Five-O, The Cosby Show, Moesha, and The Parkers.
Although she often has crossed over to pop and rhythm-and- blues recordings, she still is best known for her jazz performances. In the 1980s, she returned to jazz with a series of performances with such jazz greats as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Hank Jones. And to start the new century, Wilson teamed with pianist Ramsey Lewis for a pair of highly regarded recordings.
She has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards and honorary degrees from Berklee School of Music and Central State University in Ohio. Wilson also hosted NPR's Jazz Profiles, a weekly documentary series, from 1986 to 2005.
Selected Discography
Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, Capitol, 1962
Yesterday's Love Songs -- Today's Blues, Capitol, 1963
But Beautiful, Blue Note, 1969
Ramsey Lew is & Nancy Wilson, Meant To Be, Narada, 2002
R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal), MCG Jazz, 2004
Interview by Molly Murphy with Dan Stone
January 11, 2007
FIRST AUDITION
Q: Tell me about the contest you participated in when you were in high school.
Nancy Wilson: Actually, I didn't compete. I went and auditioned. I represented my high school. Now, that's where the arrogance comes in. I went down and actually I played a little piano then. I sang a song that I had written and they listened. We had about seven or eight major high schools in the city [Columbus, Ohio]. Each was to send someone to represent their school and those seven or eight were to compete in this contest, sponsored by the television station. So they asked me if I would not compete, you know, that I was so much better than everybody else who was doing it so they wanted to give me a TV show. "We don't want you to do that. Just come on over here. We'll give you the TV show." So I never did. I have no idea who won the contest or whatever transpired with the contest.
Q: They did that based on you playing and singing one song?
Nancy Wilson: Based on me singing one song.
Q: Do you remember what the song was? You wrote it?
Nancy Wilson: I don't remember -- something about marriage. I can't remember but it was one of the few songs I ever wrote. I think I've only written one since then but I found out then that I really can't write. I mean, it was really easy not to do it. They did just ask me not to compete and would I come on and do these 15 minutes, twice a week after the news? Basically, people would phone in or write in requests, or [ask] if I would sing something for their birthday or their anniversary or whatever.
I had a ball. It was good, it was good. From there, I worked with Sir Raleigh Randolph and the Sultans of Swing, a big 18-piece band...I used to have one of these little net gowns and was shaking the maracas. I graduated from high school. Oh, I worked at a place, the Club Regal. I loved it and there was a great pianist there named Bobby Shaw. I stayed there for a long time and I was able to get my drivers license within a few weeks after I started working at the Regal, at 15, because I was working. My dad stayed home and my younger brother was my bodyguard. You know, he was only 14, [but] that was in the days when you could do that. And I enjoyed it. I loved it. It was a great little bar, the Club Regal.
I worked every club on the east side and north side of Columbus, Ohio, from the age of 15 until I graduated from high school. I was 17. On my prom night I went to the Club Caroline and sat in with Rusty Bryant's band. He was at my house the next day asking my father if I could go on the road, which I said no to, because I was going to school. I went on to college for a while and realized it didn't make sense. I was on scholarship--tried it, and was a Dean's list student -- but the work was there. It was very difficult to stay in school when I could already be working and doing things. So I went on the road with Rusty Bryant's band and we traveled and toured the Midwest.
INFLUENCES
Q: What were you listening to around that time -- who were your influences and were they vocalists or instrumentalists?
Nancy Wilson: Vocalists. Little Jimmy Scott. I sound just like Jimmy Scott. I listened to a lot of Billy Eckstine, basically male influences, when I was younger. This is before 15, because my father was the one who would go buy the records. I heard a lot of Nat Cole. I heard Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton's Big Band. Then his things when he started recording by himself. The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little Esther. That's where I heard the females, at that juke joint.
Q: With some of those influences that you mentioned, can you talk about what appealed to you in their sound, like Little Jimmy Scott, Dinah Washington?
Nancy Wilson: The way they delivered the lyric. I understood every word.
Q: So was it the same in all of them?
Nancy Wilson: Dinah Washington had a great deal of humor. If I were to describe myself, I'd say there's a lot of Dinah -- Dinah's humor. I don't sound that much like Dinah although people compared me to her. I think that the chit-chat, the general humor, is a lot of Dinah. The overall look would be Lena Horne. The sound is Jimmy Scott. So it's a combination of things and the bottom line: by osmosis. I became me from listening, absorbing things from everybody. In my mid-teens I really heard Sarah for the first time. Biggest number I ever sang in high school was "I Ran All The Way Home." That's when my high school got to know who I was, [during] my first year in high school. "Ran All The Way Home," Sarah Vaughan. I got to hear her, my very first album. I'd been singing "Guess Who I Saw Today" since I was 15 -- Carmen McRae.
Q: Do you remember first hearing that piece?
Nancy Wilson: No. I know the album. I remember listening to it in the basement. By Special Request was the name of the album. I was 15 years old then. I don't remember ever trying to sound like anybody.
Q: You just absorbed.
Nancy Wilson: I think by osmosis. I loved the lyric and I've always wanted to tell the story. And that's what I got. I thought that Little Jimmy Scott, his bending -- it was just fun. I enjoyed listening to him. I still do. I remember he [Little Jimmy Scott] recorded an album on the Ray Charles' label. I had never heard him sing this song -- I know that he'd not heard me sing it -- and when I heard it, the first 16 bars were identical to mine. We just approached the music the same way, although I didn't know Jimmy. I didn't meet Jimmy until many, many years later. I've only met Jimmy in the last 10, 12 years because he wasn't on the scene for a long time.
STARTING IN NEW YORK CITY
Q: You met your manager [and NEA Jazz Master] John Levy in 1959. How did that come about?
Nancy Wilson: I'd finally decided that I'm going to New York. I'm giving it six months. In six months I need to sign -- be with John Levy. I mean that was the prerequisite for going to New York, to get John Levy as my manager.
I'd been singing for a long time, at that point. Professionally. I knew who John Levy was. The man had George Shearing, he had Ramsey Lewis at that time, he had The Three Sounds, he had Dakota Staton, he had Ahmad Jamal. His stable was filled with people that I respected.
But long before John ever met me he had my music in his office. Everybody had been telling him about this kid in Columbus so he kind of was waiting for me to get there. And I was waiting to be formed -- to know who I was inside -- and decided that I would go to New York. I went, got a job immediately in the garment district. I worked for the Triangle Handbag Company. Didn't like that very much.
So I stayed in the garment district for just a minute and [then] went to the New York Institute of Technology. They had an ad out and the secretary walked out the next day so I ended up being secretary. They freed me up to meet John, to work to have gigs at night. My daytime job was from 12 to 8, so I was able to work four nights a week. Once we got established, they allowed me to do my photo shoot, were okay with me going to California to record.
Within a matter of a month or so after I got to New York...I were making the rounds of some of the little places. One of them was the Blue Morocco in the Bronx on Boston Post Road. Irene Reid was the headliner. She was the singer who was there every weekend. I sat in and a couple of days after that Irene Reid broke her leg. The club called me to come fill in for her while she was out -- so I had a job night and day. That first week, I had already run into Nat and Cannon and had been out to the house. I said, "Cannon, I'm working," so they called and told John where I was. I wasn't there a but a week or so and John came up and said, "I'll call you tomorrow." And he did. Within a matter of a few days we were in the studio with Ray Bryant, his trio.
We did four sides and they were only sent to one person. We'd already talked about it. Capitol Records was the label we wanted. If you're going to do it, it was the singer's label, it truly was. David Cavenaugh was the producer we wanted. David produced Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Dakota, Jonah Jones. Within five weeks of arriving in New York, all of the things I set out to do were accomplished. John actually was there and did everything he said he was going to do. David Cavenaugh received the package, called John and said, "Don't let anybody else hear them."
I think the problem is that most people don't go with an agenda. I knew that I wanted John Levy. I knew I wanted Capitol. And I knew I wanted to work supper clubs as opposed to jazz rooms. It was kind of solidified. The idea, to me, if you go, is to have some names and to know where you're going and where you want to go -- as opposed to go to New York and think you can stand on a corner and sing and somebody's going to hear you. It doesn't work that way. You need something specific. You need to know who you're looking for, what your objective is.
HIGHS AND LOWS
Q: What are some of the high and low points in your career?
Nancy Wilson: I remember once working 56 nights straight, two shows a night. That was low -- the worst. That was the worst. The problem is that nobody realized that this is not what I set out to do. I didn't like knowing where I was going to be for two years in advance. It was like "no, no, no, this is going too slow. Not working." And the high point, the best night really, the night that solidified the career, was opening night at Coconut Grove in '64.
We had already broken the show in Las Vegas at The Flamingo. We knew that it was good but if it worked at the Coconut Grove -- especially since we were recording it live -- then this would solidify it. It was covered in Time magazine so that was a national night as opposed to just local. It was a great night.
Q: Did you know that it was going to be such a significant event? Were you aware of that when it was happening?
Nancy Wilson: Very much so. Walked down the hall, with a smile on my face, and here we go. This is it. Didn't know what it was like to have butterflies. I've never been nervous, not about singing. I didn't know you were supposed to be nervous. You know, everybody's always saying well, "Aren't you nervous before?" No, not really. I guess when you start so young, you never learn about those fears. You don't get butterflies in your stomach when you've been standing in front of people since you were three doing it.
ESTABLISHING HERSELF
Q: So how old were you when the first album came out?
Nancy Wilson: I was not a kid. I was 22. I figured at 21, 22 I'm ready and I would be able to make the proper decisions. I had already tried to figure this thing out, had looked and seen that it really was not about show business. It was about singing. It was about doing my performance because if I had wanted to...Show business that's not my cup of tea. But I do perform, so I have to take that along with it.
As a young girl, to look at those women in the business and not see anybody really be happy makes you stop and think. I stopped and thought about how many had died before they ever reached the age of 50, never made it to 60 -- that was not something that I looked forward to. And at least I did see it. I didn't just see the glamour. I saw the fact that I hadn't seen anybody really happy. I saw women who'd been married four and five times and saw a lot of unhappiness in it. So that's what we worked hard at -- John and I -- to remain my father's and mother's daughter. That I remain me, and it is not easy. It's not easy.
Q: You mean so that no one was trying to push you to create some kind of public persona that wasn't really you?
Nancy Wilson: Right, right. I would not allow that. Actually, people didn't try to do it. People would try to get me to sign contracts and whatnot. I remember a lady, Madame Rose Brown, she had a TV show in Columbus, trying to tell me how I should act, things I would have to do. I said, "I don't have to do that." That is not a part of who I am.
And Capitol Records never told me what to sing. Nobody has ever! I get that question a lot these days, "What did they try to make you do?" I beg your pardon? You know, nobody tried to make me do anything. It was about wise selection of material and we were all in accord about it. There was nobody trying to make me somebody else.
Q: We talked a little bit about labels and how everybody likes to put a label on a musician. How would you describe what you do?
Nancy Wilson: I'm a song stylist. That allows me to sing anything I want to sing. It allows me to do Pop which, when I first started recording, those songs were the Pop of the day. Now those albums are in the jazz box, but they were Pop then. So it's just a question of timing. I'm still singing the great ballad, the great story, the American songbook. Nothing is ever going to replace Gershwin, Cole Porter, Billy Strayhorn. The music -- that music -- will always be. It is just marvelous and nothing is being written to compare to it. The lyric is no longer of significance to the degree that it was. It will come back, I'm certain. There are far more singers being mentioned then there were 15 years ago so, you know, it's all cyclical. Hopefully it'll come back sometime so I'll know it.
I never wanted to be this great star. I never wanted celebrity. No, that does not enter the equation at all. If I want to go to the supermarket without makeup, in jeans, I'm going. I don't travel with anybody. I don't want to ever have to be surrounded by people. That is not fun. I like privacy. I can't have that if I'm a big-time celebrity. Before I go to work on stage, I don't want anybody messing with my hair. I don't need anybody to do my makeup. I do that because that's my time and if I have somebody else in there with me, I can't concentrate. And I like silence before I go on. I'm as open and free as can be afterward but I cannot do it before I go on. I need to see people afterward.
LIVE AND IN THE STUDIO
Q: When you're telling a story, how important is it to have an audience there and to be interacting with an audience?
Nancy Wilson: Doesn't matter.
Q: So can you do it the same way, have the same amount of feeling if you're recording in a studio?
Nancy Wilson: Sure. That's where the actress comes in -- it's all about going inside and making it happen. I mean, the audience is great but if I couldn't do it in a studio, then I'm doing something wrong. I've closed my eyes in the studio and I'm there. Takes a minute, you know, but back in the day when professional people ruled the record industry, you came in and you were on it. The energy level was just so high. You'd have anywhere from five pieces to 36 pieces. At one minute after eight, the conductor would start the music. Many times we used the first take to iron out the problems, if there were any, in the score. Record no less than three songs in four hours any given night -- record an album in three nights. And we did that twice a year. Every six months there was an album released. Those of us who came along at that time have a body of work for people to judge as opposed to every two, three years now. If they're big enough, these people don't record more than five albums in their entire life where we have upwards of 70. Some people have a hundred albums out, like Tennessee Ernie Ford. It's amazing: every wonderful song I ever wanted to record I got a chance to do. So that's the beauty of coming along at the time we did, because we were able to record wonderful, wonderful songs. The songs were what mattered.
Q: So being on tour and playing to all of these audiences, was that almost a necessity, just part of the career?
Nancy Wilson: Okay, it was about the supper clubs, it was about the recording -- never about movies -- it was about television. It was about being able to go in the studio and do that job, being able to take that from the studio, put it on the floor, and then [onto] television. I always wanted to do TV -- so I did a lot of television. I loved it. We were able to cover all those bases.
Q: And what's it like to be on stage and to sort of hold an audience and be moving them, controlling them?
Nancy Wilson: I wouldn't have a clue.
Q: Really?
Nancy Wilson: No, I mean, I wouldn't know how to verbalize that.
Q: Do you get a certain energy watching your impact on people?
Nancy Wilson: Well, it's kind of nice to play a place like Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall and walk out and...the audience responds and they give you all the love that you ever needed -- before you ever sing the first note. That's great but it's not about power. I've never thought of it in terms of control or anything like that.
LUTHER HENDERSON
Q: Luther Henderson is also a recipient of an NEA Jazz Masters award and you have worked with him, so we wanted to ask you about that.
Nancy Wilson: I think Luther put that first show together, he and Marty Charnin, the one that we did at the Coconut Grove. The second one, too. Luther was just delightful, lot of fun. And I've seen him do Broadway things. I'd not been to too many Broadway shows, but anything Luther was involved in I tried to get to see. But he was just a charming, handsome, beautiful man, and fun to work with. Sharp as could be with his little beret and his ascots and stuff, yeah. Luther was marvelous; really very bright and fun, loved the music. I loved his charts.
Q: Why?
Nancy Wilson: They just were humorous and fun, light but with a great deal of harmony. And as far as writing, there was Oliver Nelson and nobody wrote any better for me than Jimmy Jones, and, of course, Gerald Wilson. The harmonic structure and the things that they would do were just great, just fun. I mean, to know when you walked in front of the microphone, that what you were going to hear in the next five minutes was going to knock your socks off, it was going to be great.
Q: It's interesting that you and Luther are almost on the opposite ends of the spectrum as far as you as a vocalist are in such a public position whereas Luther was always behind the scenes.
Nancy Wilson: Well, if you're ever saw Lena Horne, you saw Luther. He did so many of her things. And [for] so many of the young women like me, Luther was the guiding light. He was the man behind the throne. He would write the charts and put the shows together for so many of the young women who played the supper club circuit. And they were gorgeous, you know. Oh, there was Dorothy Dandridge, Joyce Bryant -- she was so fabulous, just a gorgeous woman. They appeared to be having fun and they appeared to have a life, other than Dorothy. Dorothy's life was very tragic. Lena Horne, to me, has some of everything that you need to be a great woman. She was a great Civil Rights worker, a marvelous look, and just paved the way. I'm grateful to her -- and for her.
RAMSEY LEWIS
Q: What has it been like to be playing with Ramsey on his current tour?
Nancy Wilson: This is our third album together. We did a lot of work together early on because Ramsey was with John then. But always Ramsey would go out and play. There'd be a short, brief break and then I'd go out and do my thing. We never interacted. We open together, we close together, and we've got a show. John, he'll say, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." I said, "Well, I'm not going to do much work but I will support the Ramsey Lewis album." He got to see us last fall at Monterey, at Cerritos here [in California]. He came backstage and said, "Okay, all right, I see what you mean, now and I now understand why you guys want to do this."
Q: Why?
Nancy Wilson: 'Cause we're having fun. As I say, we are interacting. We talk, we walk out together. You don't see that too often. Usually everybody goes up and does their own thing and that's it. So now, I kind of try to do a little bit from the first album -- just so people might remember the two of us. Then we do some of Meant To Be Now, open with one of those, and then we are doing things from the new album which is Simple Pleasures .
Q: And are you going to continue?
Nancy Wilson: For a little bit, yeah, yeah. We've got dates up through next year, but not a lot, you know, not many.
BEING AN NEA JAZZ MASTER
Q: We've been talking about labels, how do you feel about the label, NEA Jazz Master?
Nancy Wilson: Because of the company, I think it's a great label, you know. I remember one of the jazz critics in the city of San Francisco came to my opening night at the Fairmont and wrote this review the next day. He just did not understand, and [wrote] "they just love her." But he didn't get it and he couldn't understand why I made more money than Kitty Kallen. This is a review?
If I do something up-tempo, you can bet everything I do is jazz-oriented. Jazz people, aficionados, might not consider it such, but eventually they came in the fold. I've always surrounded myself with great jazz musicians although what I was singing might not have been considered jazz. It's probably because I did not scat in the Ella or Betty Carter tradition. Because I didn't do those things, maybe some of the jazz critics did not think that I was [a jazz singer]. But it didn't bother me. I figured if I was true to myself, if I sang the things I liked, it would touch people's heart and their ears and they would hear, and they would feel. I think that that's what a master is, if you can do that. So I am overjoyed and so pleased. As I say, the company that I will be joining is marvelous so I'm quite happy about it. It's been well worth it. This is one of the highest honors I could ever have.
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Nancy Wilson (b. February 20, 1937)— Singer
At a Glance…
Traveled and Sang
Coveted as a Guest Star and Hostess
Weathered Changes in Musical Climate
Selected discography
Sources
Nancy Wilson has been a world-renowned jazz, rhythm and blues, and pop singer for more than 35 years. Fashionable and poised, with a voice that both soothes and seduces an audience, Wilson prefers to call herself a “song stylist” who ranges freely through several musical idioms. Rather than reading music, Wilson learns each song by listening to the melody, enabling her to decide which songs best complement her rich, supple voice. An Essence magazine contributor noted that the entertainer has always defied easy labels or glib categorizations: “She is a jazz singer. A balladeer. She does cabaret, sophisticated pop, rhythm and blues. To say she is any one of these, or even all of these, is to miss who she really is—an artist of such enduring talent, class, and elegance that she doesn’t just defy the labels, she transcends them.”
Wilson is among the best known in a second wave of vocal performers who followed in the footsteps of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughn. Like those singers, she has enjoyed a long period of success before live audiences in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Wilson has also been a featured guest star on numerous television variety shows and specials, her popularity remaining constant through the decades. An Ebony correspondent concluded that she is “one of the great distinctive voices, a singer whose words are never less than crystal clear, and whose head, heart, and soul always seem totally enmeshed in her songs… For 35 years the exquisite, melting voice has ranged across the music landscape, from small jazz clubs to the main dining rooms of the casinos of Las Vegas, from America to Japan.”
Many pop singers have come and gone since Wilson found her first national audience in the early 1960s. The secret to her longevity—aside from her still-glamorous good looks—lies in her flawless styling, splendid vocals, and sensitive interpretation of lyrics. Good music, she was quoted as saying in Essence, is “what people identify me with.” Her talents brought her fans from all races before the term “crossover” had even been coined. Wilson told Essence: “I didn’t know I was a ’black artist’ until I was nominated for a Grammy in a black category.”
The oldest of six children of Olden and Lillian Wilson, Nancy Wilson was born and raised in Chillicothe, Ohio. Hers was a close-knit family with two hard-working
Sang in church choirs as a child; performed in theater clubs, Columbus, OH, area, c. early 1950s; star of local radio show Skyline Melody, Columbus, OH, 1952-54; member of Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Band, 1956-58; New York Institute of Technology, secretary, 1959; club singer, New York, NY, 1959—; released firstalbum, Like in Love, with Capitol Records, 1959. Hostess, The Nancy Wilson Show, 1967-68; numerous appearances on variety shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Flip Wilson Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show, and The Arsenio Halt Show; numerous appearances on television series. Cofounder, Nancy Wilson Foundation (brings inner-city children to the country).
Member: Presidential Council for Minority Businesss Enterprises; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Operation PUSH (chairperson); United Negro College Fund; Committee for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Selected awards: Grammy Award, 1964, for How Glad t Am; Grammy nominations, 1965, for Gentle is My Love, 1988, for Forbidden Lover, and 1994, for With My Lover Beside Me; Emmy Award, 1975, for The Nancy Wilson Show; winner, Tokyo Song Festival, 1983; Global Entertainer of the Year, World Conference of Mayors, 1986; Image Award, NAACP, 1986; star, Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1990; Essence Award, Essence magazine, 1992; Martin Luther King Center for Social Change Award, 1993; Turner Broadcasting Trumpet Award for Outstanding Achievement, 1994.
Addresses: Management— Lynn Coles Productions, P.O. Box 93-1198, Los Angeles, CA 90093.
parents. Her mother labored long hours as a domestic and her father worked in an iron foundry. Often Nancy and her brothers and sisters would spend the summers at their grandmother’s home on Whiskey Run Road just outside Columbus, Ohio. There the youngster would delight her extended family with her singing.
Wilson has admitted that she has absolutely no formal voice training. Her talent was a “gift” that she simply utilized from the age of four. Very early she decided she wanted to become a professional singer. She sang in the local church choir and listened avidly to a variety of postwar black American music, including the albums of Billy Eckstine, LaVern Baker, and Nat King Cole. When her family moved to Columbus during her teens, she became host of her own radio show, Skyline Melody, in which she would perform phoned-in requests. Even then her repertoire ranged widely across the pop, jazz, ballad, and torch song categories.
During that period she met jazz saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, who became a major influence on her musical career. Adderly convinced Wilson to move away from a gimmick-laden, pop performance style and emphasize a more sophisticated jazz and ballad material. Doing so, the pair sometimes performed together, including on the 1962 album Nancy Wilson/ Cannonball Adderly Quintet.
In 1959 Wilson decided to go solo. She moved to New York City with two concrete goals: she wanted to record for Capitol Records, and she wanted Adderly’s agent, John Levy, to represent her too. Meanwhile, she worked as a secretary at the New York Institute of Technology during the days and sang at nightclubs in the evenings. Wilson assumed she might have to wait months or even years for her break, but within four weeks of her arrival in the city she landed a major assignment. A New York City nightclub owner asked her to substitute for Irene Reid. Delighted with the opportunity, Wilson gave a stellar performance and was quickly booked at the club on a permanent basis. Soon thereafter, Levy came to the club to hear her and immediately arranged a demonstration recording session for the rising star.
At that session Wilson recorded “Guess Who I Saw Today” and “Sometimes I’m Happy.” Levy sent the tapes to Capitol Records, and within a week Wilson was under contract to the company. “Guess Who I Saw Today” became a modest hit in 1962, but Wilson achieved a wide audience the following year with “Tell Me the Truth.” These milestones came early in a period that can only be described as frenetic for Wilson and her drummer husband, Kenny Dennis, whom she had married in 1960. Other key events of her life at that time were the release of her 1960 debut album Like in Love and the recording of her first big rhythm and blues hit, “Save Your Love for Me,” in 1962.
Often Wilson performed more than 40 weeks per year, two shows a night, at big nightclubs such as Los Angeles’s Coconut Grove and Las Vegas’s Sahara Hotel. She was not afraid to look glamorous or to include jazz-styled pop music in her vocal repertoire. In 1964, a Time magazine reviewer praised her for her “artfully derivative jazz style,” adding: “She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller.” That year Wilson received a Grammy Award for How Glad I Am; the following year her Gentle Is My Love drew a Grammy nomination.
Asked how she managed to keep her act seemingly new in light of the constant travel, recording sessions, television appearances, and demands of a family, Wilson told Ebony: “I feel that a performer owes the audience what it bought in the first place. You cannot shirk that responsibility. I don’t care how many times you’ve done an act, each time you go out it is supposed to be like the first time.”
The ceaseless round of live shows, recording sessions, and television appearances began to take a toll on Wilson. In 1970 she divorced her first husband with whom she had a son, and married the Reverend Wiley Burton in 1974. Soon she and Burton had two children together. Wilson curtailed her professional responsibilities somewhat, but her popularity remained undiminished. In 1973, for example, she undertook tours to South America and Japan, but she did not appear in supper clubs.
Wilson told Ebony that she thought the changes improved her show. “Because you’re not playing the same place two weeks in a row, you can bring a freshness to a performance,” she said. “You don’t feel that it’s stagnant because each audience is different… I used to do 28 days in a row where I had to do two shows a night. By the 15th night, it gets to you. Four weeks in Las Vegas can be painful just because of the sameness.”
As Wilson’s children have grown, the artist has also accepted more live engagements, returning home to a spacious ranch in the California high desert 140 miles from Los Angeles. In 1987 Wilson told Ebony that she had finally achieved the kind of balance she had always been searching for between her professional and her private lives. “I’m not a show business personality,” she confided. “That whole show biz life is fine, but it’s not what I do. I sing. I enjoy that while I’m doing it, but all by itself it does not sustain me.” Besides recording, Wilson has devoted time and money to a several charitable causes, including the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, the National Heart Association, the Cancer Society, and the United Negro College Fund.
Considered one of jazz music’s “grand divas” by a 1992 Essence magazine rating of current black American singers, Wilson has brought her cool and stylish music to a new generation of listeners. In 1990 she was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a signal achievement for someone whose career has not included extensive film and television work. She has also continued to release albums, issuing her 54th full-length recording Love, Nancy in 1994.
At a party celebrating the release of her 1994 album, Wilson told Jet magazine: “My career is seriously soaring right now. I’m busier than I’ve ever been and I’m going full force. Sure I’m still trying to juggle the responsibilities I feel as a wife, mother, and a performer, but my life is great. I feel at peace with myself and that’s reflected in how I approach music.” She added: “The songs on Love, Nancy portray what each of us needs daily to sustain ourselves. The power of love really can overcome anything!”
Something Wonderful, 1960.
The Swingin’s Mutual, 1960.
Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderly Quintet, Capitol, 1962.
Hello Young Lovers, 1962.
Broadway —My Way, 1963.
Hollywood—My Way, 1963.
Yesterday’s Love Songs, Today’s Blues, 1963.
Today, Tomorrow, Forever, 1964.
How Glad I Am, 1964.
The Nancy Wilson Show at the Coconut Grove, 1965.
Nancy Wilson Today —My Way, 1965.
Gentle Is My Love, 1965.
From Broadway With Love, 1966.
A Touch of Love Today, 1966.
Tender Loving Care, 1966.
Nancy—Naturally, 1966.
Just for Now, 1967.
Lush Life, 1967.
Welcome to My Love, 1968.
Easy, 1968.
The Best of Nancy Wilson, 1968.
Sound of Nancy Wilson, 1968.
Nancy, 1969.
Son of a Preacher Man, 1969.
Close Up, 1969.
Hurt So Bad, 1969.
Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, 1970.
Now I’m a Woman, 1970.
Double Play, 1971.
Right to Love, 1971.
But Beautiful, 1971.
I Know Him I Love Him, 1973.
All in Love Is Fair, 1974.
Come Get to This, 1975.
This Mother’s Daughter, 1976.
I’ve Never Been to Me, 1977.
Music on My Mind, 1978.
Life, Love & Harmony, 1979.
Take My Love, 1980.
Keep You Satisfied, 1986.
Forbidden Lover, 1987.
Nancy Now!, 1990.
With My Lover Beside Me, 1991.
Love, Nancy, 1994.
Echoes of an Era, Elektra, 1982.
What’s New, EMI (Japan), 1982.
Your Eyes, Nippon Columbia, 1983.
I’ll Be a Song, Interface (Japan), 1983.
Godsend, Interface (Japan), 1984.
(With the Crusaders) The Good and Bad Times, MCA, 1986.
Ebony, May 1966, pp. 140-46; May 1973, pp. 30-40; November 1987, pp. 116-19.
Essence, October 1986, p. 55; May 1992, p. 70.
Jet, April 7, 1986, pp. 30-31; July 28, 1986; March 16, 1987, p. 16; October 22, 1990, p. 11; June 27, 1994, pp. 58-61.
Newsweek, July 27, 1964, p. 76.
Time, July 17, 1964, p. 61.
Vibe, March 1995.
—Anne Janette Johnson
http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/04/interview-nancy-wilson-part-1.html
Nancy Wilson is the last great female song stylist of the 1950s
and the first American female pop-soul singer of the 1960s. Though she
began by performing locally in her hometown in the 1950s, her Capitol
career started at the tail end of 1959, just as one era was ending and
another was beginning. Throughout the 1960s, Nancy was known for brassy
updates of jazz standards and hip pop soul and rock renditions. And yet
today, she hasn't been properly credited or 
celebrated by our national cultural institutions for transforming both.
Nor has she been fully recognized for confronting and easing the racial
barriers that made the 1960s a very different world from the decades
that followed. Today, Nancy makes a select number of concert and club
appearances (she will be appearing in New York in
May).
Nancy's career truly is remarkable. She recorded more than 50 albums—two albums a year for Capitol between 1959 and 1970 (her most recent
album was recorded in 2007). Eleven of her singles appeared on Billboard's Top Pop Singles chart—while 22 landed on Billboard's
Top R&B Singles chart. Nancy was nominated for 20 Grammy Awards—and
won 3. Her polite, sultry style, her confident phrasing, and her
exciting delivery paved the way for Diana Ross, Dionne 
Warwick, Dusty Springfield and so many other female pop and soul
vocalists. As Whitney Houston said during a 1992 tribute: "Nancy
Wilson's artistry has outlived the trends of various decades." How true.
[Photo of Nancy Wilson by Robert W. Kelley for Life]In Part 1 of
my five-part interview with Nancy, 73, the statuesque songstress talks
about growing up in Ohio, her early vocal influences, where she did most
of her singing as a child, and how she wound up singing regularly on
local TV at age 15 in 1952:
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Nancy Wilson's biggest influences were "Little" Jimmy Scott and Dinah Washington. One of the best
collections of Scott's early recordings is The Savoy Years and More. It's available at iTunes or here. Dinah Washington's recordings from Nancy's youth are on Mercury. Some of this material is out of print. But Vol. 4 from The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury (1954-56) is at iTunes or here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Nancy Wilson in 1966 with Andy Williams singing On a Clear Day. Nancy's expressive interpretation locks you in (and certainly locked in Williams), making it impossible to take your eyes off of her...
In 1992, the Essence Awards honored Nancy Wilson. Here's a clip from the event hosted by Whitney Houston...
http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/04/interview-nancy-wilson-part-3.htmlSomething Wonderful , 1960.
The Swingin's Mutual , 1961.
Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley , Capitol, 1962.
Hello Young Lovers , 1962.
Broadway--My Way , 1963.
Hollywood--My Way , 1963.
Yesterday's Love Songs, Today's Blues , 1963.
Today, Tomorrow, Forever , 1964.
How Glad I Am , 1964.
The Nancy Wilson Show at the Coconut Grove , 1965.
Nancy Wilson Today--My Way , 1965.
Gentle Is My Love , 1965.
From Broadway With Love , 1966.
A Touch of Love Today , 1966.
Tender Loving Care , 1966.
Nancy--Naturally , 1966.
Just for Now , 1967.
Lush Life , 1967.
Welcome to My Love , 1968.
Easy , 1968.
The Best of Nancy Wilson , 1968.
Sound of Nancy Wilson , 1968.
Nancy , 1969.
Son of a Preacher Man , 1969.
Close Up , 1969.
Hurt So Bad , 1969.
Can't Take My Eyes Off You , 1970.
Now I'm a Woman , 1970.
Double Play , 1971.
Right to Love , 1971.
I Know I Love Him , 1973.
All in Love Is Fair , 1974.
Come Get to This , 1975.
This Mother's Daughter , Capitol, 1976.
I've Never Been to Me , 1977.
Music on My Mind , 1978.
Life, Love and Harmony , 1979.
Take My Love , 1980.
At My Best , ASI Records, 1981.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95307007
Studio Sessions
Nancy Wilson On Piano JazzUpdated December 12, 2012
Published October 3, 2008
Embed: <iframe src="http://www.npr.org/player/embed/95307007/95282146" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
Set List:
"Almost Like Being in Love" (Lerner, Loewe)
"But Beautiful" (Burke, Van Heusen)
"Easy Living" (Rainger, Robin)
"Twilight World" (McPartland)
"Green Dolphin Street" (Kaper)
"When October Goes" (Manilow, Mercer)
"The Nearness of You" (Carmichael, Washington)
"All in Love Is Fair" (S. Wonder)
"I Thought About You" (Mercer, VanHeusen)
Nancy Wilson — pictured here performing at the 17th annual NEA Jazz Masters Awards Concert — has recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Ramsey Lewis and Hank Jones.Bryan Bedder/Getty Images Entertainment
Nancy Wilson was born in 1937 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Her vocal talents began attracting attention when, at age 15, she won a talent show in Columbus in which the prize was a twice-a-week television program. In addition to the TV show, Wilson began a regular gig with Rusty Bryant's band and sat in with the major jazz acts that came through nearby Columbus. Cannonball Adderley was particularly fond of her singing, and this meeting eventually led to a recording contract with Capitol Records and a series of releases with Billy Mays' Orchestra, George Shearing and Adderley.
Wilson eventually branched out and began recording music that made inroads into pop and R&B. She toured with artists such as Nat King Cole, LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown and Sarah Vaughan. She also found a niche in television, and after many guest appearances, she was given her own Emmy-winning variety program, The Nancy Wilson Show.
After many successful years with Capitol, where her sales were often second only to The Beatles, Wilson moved to Columbia in the 1980s. While she continued to perform and record pop music, she also recorded a string of solid jazz albums and performed with the likes of Ramsey Lewis, Benny Golson and Hank Jones. In addition, her forays into pop made her a favorite on radio stations playing the "new adult contemporary" format in the 1990s.
Wilson's knowledge of music and her personal relationships with jazz musicians made her the perfect host for the NPR series Jazz Profiles.
Originally recorded Aug. 3, 1993.
Originally broadcast Jan. 15, 1994.
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Very Best of Nancy Wilson: The Capitol Recordings 1960-1976
http://jazztimes.com/articles/14910-nancy-wilson-how-glad-we-are-for-the-grace-of
Nancy Wilson: How Glad We Are for the Grace of...
September 2004
by Christopher Loudon
JazzTimes
Of the innumerable female jazz vocalists who have stepped up to the mike throughout the past half-century, I'd credit Anita O'Day with the finest-tuned jazz sensibility and place Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald in a photo finish for most musically accomplished. Yet Nancy Wilson remains my hands-down favorite. "Do you mind me asking why?" inquires the legendary 67-year-old, less with incredulity than genuine interest, when I mention my longstanding infatuation.
It's not an easy question to answer.
There is, of course, Wilson's unique blend of diamondlike clarity, flawless enunciation and whispered smokiness, which, spanning some five-dozen albums, consistently suggests Dinah Washington enveloped in sable. Then there's her innate elegance-a stunning combination of sophistication and natural beauty that, to borrow a sentiment from one of her best tracks, always leaves us breathless. Equally important are her tremendously high standards, as uncompromising as Tony Bennett's, when it comes to selecting material ("If I don't like it, I'm not singing it," she firmly states), and a remarkable dexterity that finds her equally at ease (and equally in command) with silky standards, peppy pop tunes and grittier R&B fare. Not to be overlooked are her exquisite taste in arrangers and musical partners (extending from Ben Webster to Ramsey Lewis) or her unswerving loyalty (just ask manager John Levy, who's been with Wilson since 1959, or publicist Lynn Coles, who's been her friend and champion nearly as long).
Actually, though, the allure of Nancy Wilson can be summed up in just one word: effortlessness. It is both her charm and her curse. She manages, much like the perennially underappreciated Doris Day, to make it all seem too easy; as a result generating huge popularity among record buyers and concertgoers and enormous indifference from critics. In his hefty tome Jazz Singing, noted historian Will Friedwald sings the praises of everyone from Bing Crosby to Della Reese. Within the book's 477 pages, Wilson is mentioned a grand total of once, and then only to dismiss her as "less interesting" than Dakota Staton. Other, equally respected observers have likewise politely (and, a la Day, inaccurately) credited her as a pleasant lightweight. Not surprisingly, her peers are better attuned to her exceptionality. In a recent Down Beat poll, 73 singers-such masters as Mark Murphy, Andy Bey, Kurt Elling, Dianne Reeves and Cassandra Wilson among them-were asked to name the greatest vocal jazz albums of all time. The most votes rightly, if unexpectedly, went to 1961's Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, placing Wilson seven notches above Ella Fitzgerald's highest entry and nine above Sarah Vaughan's.
But Wilson herself has never been comfortable with the jazz moniker. "I'm a song stylist and a storyteller," she insists. "My songs are little vignettes. If a lyric doesn't have a story to tell, who cares how great the melody is? I know if I'd originally been put out there as a jazz singer I would never have accomplished the things I have."
Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, but raised 50 miles due north in Columbus, Wilson made her professional debut in 1952, at age 15, headlining a local, twice-per-week TV show called Skyline Melodies. Finishing high school and entering college, she signed on for two years of club dates and touring with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club combo, cutting her first record in 1956 as featured vocalist on a long-forgotten ditty called "Don't Tell Me." Convinced she'd find more work as a solo artist, she quit both Bryant's band and college, reasoning, "I was making more money on weekends singing off campus than I could ever make with a degree, and I was going to the wrong school for what I really wanted to do, which was something in medicine. So, the music kind of took over."
One fateful evening in 1958, Wilson was enjoying a rare night off, sitting in with the band at Columbus' 502 Club when in strolled sax giant Cannonball Adderley. As the alto saxophonist is quoted in Wilson's 1996 box set Ballads, Blues, & Big Bands, the singer was performing some "unrehearsed, off-the-top-of-the-head stuff." Adderley became smitten, recognizing that "this young kid had so much to offer-tone, style, confidence-I felt she had a long way to go." And go she did, directly to New York.
Demonstrating maturity rare among 22-year-olds, Wilson landed in Manhattan determined to have "John Levy manage me and Dave Cavanaugh produce me at Capitol Records. That was my plan, and I got it all in five weeks!" she says. "I knew that John was a decent human being. I'd heard nothing but good things about him and knew that he would understand what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a cross between Lena Horne and Dinah Washington and play the good rooms. I didn't want to be playing in sawdust. I thought it might be a great crossover opportunity for John, allowing him to get out of the strictly jazz field, and it was a great chance for me to have a manager who gave a damn."
In Shirley MacLaine's biographical nightclub number "Remember Me?" she sings "on Carol Haney's broken leg I rode to fame," referring to her role as Broadway understudy to Haney in The Pajama Game and a chance accident that found her subbing for the leading lady on opening night and subsequently dazzling the critics.
Nancy Wilson can make a remarkably similar claim.
Two weeks after arriving in New York, Wilson was invited to sub for headliner Irene Reid at the Blue Morocco in the Bronx after the star suffered a broken limb. In wandered John Levy. Levy led her to Cavanaugh who promptly offered a contract and, on December 7, 1959, Wilson found herself inside the fabled Capitol studios at Hollywood and Vine recording her debut album, Like in Love, with renowned arranger-conductor Billy May. "Billy was a fabulous man, just fabulous," Wilson enthuses. "He could get down in the cracks and raise some serious dust."
At the time, Wilson couldn't have found a more suitable home. Cofounded by singer-songwriter Johnny Mercer in the mid-'40s, Capitol wasn't yet one of the majors (that would come with the addition to their roster of four lads from Liverpool) when she climbed aboard, but the company was renowned for its care and expertise with vocalists, having nurtured Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, the Four Freshmen and Keely Smith. "For me," says Wilson, "there wasn't a better record company in the world; and Dave Cavanaugh was such a jewel, an absolute doll baby. If I'd ended up at Riverside or one of the other jazz labels, I don't think that within three years I'd have been playing the Coconut Grove and the Fairmont in San Francisco and the Imperial Room in Toronto."
Though not a massive, out-of-the-box hit, Like in Love sold respectably and, recalls Wilson, "the second one [Something Wonderful, featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax and just recently reissued on CD] did better, the third [with Adderley] did better than that, as did the fourth [her landmark union with the George Shearing Quintet, The Swingin's Mutual!]." Yet, inspired as the pairings with Adderley and Shearing may have been, they were also musical marriages of convenience. "It was so easy," says Wilson, "because George was signed to Capitol and was represented by John Levy. Cannonball, too, was with John. The stable was mean-absolutely fantastic. It was really hard not to make it because you were surrounded by such talent."
By 1963, Wilson, now a staple of the best supper clubs and top TV variety shows, was well along the path to stardom. That year, it was the matched set of gems Broadway-My Way and Hollywood-My Way, both arranged by pianist Jimmy Jones, that, along with 1964's massive "How Glad I Am" (the only significant single of Wilson's purposefully album-oriented career and a song that, she says, "everybody was opposed to, but I insisted"), elevated her into the pop-jazz stratosphere.
Interestingly, Wilson's ascension paralleled the rosy, all-American optimism of the Camelot era. Indeed, she was the Jackie Kennedy of jazz-cool, elegant, sophisticated and smart, with a backbone of pure steel hidden beneath designer gowns. Her signature tune at the time was the mini-saga "Guess Who I Saw Today" (included on Something Wonderful), a melodramatic evocation of marital discord in the cocktail-fueled, Kennedy-loving suburbs. Which raises the question: Was Wilson, alongside Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and Herb Alpert, then perhaps the quintessential suburban artiste? Absolutely, which should in no way be perceived as condemnation. She was the vocal equivalent of a well-crafted bestseller; and, just as the three Johns-O'Hara, Updike and Cheever-helped the subdivision set learn to appreciate great literature, Wilson (together with Nat Cole and Peggy Lee) took vocal jazz out of the penthouses and into the middle classes.
Even at her earthiest Wilson was never as gritty as soul sisters like Aretha Franklin and Cissy Houston, and she didn't speak to or for the masses, reserving her messages for the Oldsmobile and Canadian Club crowd. Around the same time that Franklin was earning the nation's respect, Wilson was serving up satin-lined covers of pop-lite hits like "You've Got Your Troubles" and "Sunny" and reteaming with Billy May for the gorgeously plush Lush Life, which she still considers her all-time favorite. The album's highlight is Wilson's definitive version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," a song she considers, "the hardest I've ever sung. There's this one little passage in there that is very, very difficult. We tried to record it one night-it was the last tune we were going to do-and I just couldn't get it, so we stopped at 11, and I went home and had nightmares!"
Wilson also tried her hand at television, attempting to emulate the small screen success of Andy Williams and Dean Martin with NBC's The Nancy Wilson Show, which, though it lasted only a single season, earned her an Emmy. (Subsequent guest roles on small screen hits as diverse as Hawaii Five-0, Police Story and The Cosby Show proved Wilson an extremely capable dramatic and comedic actress, comparable to an amalgam of Diahann Carroll and Phylicia Rashad.)
As America's dream of a suburban utopia started turning nightmarish in the early '70s, Wilson became more musically daring, swapping urbane for genuinely urban and augmenting standards and pop ditties with bluesier, more distinctly soulful material. Albums like Now I'm a Woman, This Mother's Daughter and Life, Love and Harmony mixed some gristle into her creamy gravy, demonstrating that, as Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall later observed, she was "a great improviser who goes beyond any category."
Ultimately, she would remain at Capitol for fully two decades, outlasting even the stalwart Lee, delivering some three dozen albums, and regularly ranking directly behind the Beatles in the company's annual sales tallies. (The label's Hollywood tower may have been known as "the house that Nat built," but surely Wilson financed most of the fittings and furnishings.)
While at Capitol, she was paired with top arrangers like May and Oliver Nelson ("I miss Oliver so," she laments. "I wish he'd lived a little longer because I had about four or five more albums to do with him"), but also encouraged lesser-known talents, including Gerald Wilson and Jimmy Jones. "It wasn't," she says, "like we had to fight for these people. I wanted Gerald. I wanted Jimmy. So did Dave [Cavanaugh]. We wanted stuff that was good but was still fresh." Remarkably, Wilson was never teamed with Nelson Riddle. Would, perhaps, the grandiosity of the trademark Riddle sound have been a bit overwhelming for her? "Nah," she laughs, "I could have shot it like it was a cracker. Nelson would have been so easy. It would have been like working out with a symphony-a piece of cake. But I don't know that it was what I wanted. Nelson was marvelous, but it wasn't for me-a little too hard-edged, I think."
After parting ways with Capitol, Wilson found herself, like so many of her peers, "unable to get a major label here. So, I signed with Sony in Japan." Four year later, following Sony's takeover of Columbia, her recording career returned stateside. "Columbia was great," says Wilson, though she admits, "They kept saying they didn't know how to market me, and I'd say, 'Come on, people, let's just go in and do a damn R&B tune. I'm not taking my clothes off and I'm not shakin' my butt, but I will give you great songs that can go either way.' I tell you, I've been blessed. God gave me a gift and I've chosen to use it wisely, but he didn't give me a love of the business."
Creative differences aside, Wilson's decade-long association with Columbia ignited a third career wave, marked by a reversion to the smoother style that defined her earliest recordings coupled with a keen appreciation for material beyond the Great American Songbook. Exquisite achievements from this period include her 1984 teaming with Ramsey Lewis for The Two of Us and, most notably, 1991's With My Lover Beside Me featuring obscure Johnny Mercer lyrics newly set to music by Barry Manilow. "That came about when I met a producer in an elevator in Japan," remembers Wilson. "He mentioned Mercer, said, 'Might you be interested?' and the first person I thought of was Barry Manilow. I still think he has the best commercial ear of anyone I know. He is a dynamite performer and writes beautifully-and simplistically. It's never overkill with Barry. It's just nice."
Wilson's post-Columbia recording schedule has, by choice, slowed considerably but includes two superb reunions with Lewis-2002's Meant to Be and last year's Simple Pleasures, the latter featuring a soaring version of "God Bless the Child" that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a half-century of recording and touring has done nothing to diminish her vocal beauty or authority. More of her time has been devoted to a different kind of voice work, as the impressively knowledgeable and articulate host of NPR's Jazz Profiles. To date, the weekly series has showcased more than 100 seminal jazz figures, many Wilson's personal friends, and explored such intriguing themes as women in jazz, the rigors of touring and the post-millennial struggle to sustain the vitality of jazz. Indeed, practically the only key player who's never been feted on the program is Wilson herself.
Wilson's latest disc, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal), on Pittsburgh's nonprofit MCG (Manchester Craftsmen's Guild) label, is intended to celebrate her 50th anniversary in show business, though as she wryly observes, "It's really been 52." Echoing the sentiment of Sinatra's late-career Some Nice Things I've Missed, the album is, she says, themed around "songs I adore but never got the chance to sing. It's a real mixed bag."
As the title suggests, each of the dozen tracks has a deeper, more intimate resonance for Wilson. "Little Green Apples," the late O.C. Smith's sweet paean to marital satisfaction, was included because, "O.C. was my pastor, so it is my tribute to him." Leonard and Martin's "Why Did I Choose You," a dreamy duet with Kenny Lattimore, honors Marvin Gaye, from whom Wilson first heard the song "back in the days when Marvin wanted to be a balladeer." Irving Berlin's haunting "How About Me" is, she adds, "because of Russell Malone. I heard him play it, and the tears just rolled down my face. I didn't have a clue what the song was or if it had lyrics, but I just fell in love with it and knew someday I had to sing it." Johnny Mandel's "I Wish I'd Met You," cowritten with Richard Rodney Bennett and Franklin Underwood, is, she sighs, "just such a beautiful story"; Lee Wing's sassy "An Older Man (Is Like an Elegant Wine)," featuring solos by Toots Thielemans and Phil Woods, was added because, Wilson coyly suggests, "I'm getting up in age now and trying to explain to people the delights of an older man. I love it! It's a throwback to the 1950s-a Blossom Dearie kinda thing." Elsewhere, Wilson teams once each with Ivan Lins and Gary Burton (the latter on the oft-covered "That's All," which she was at first hesitant to do until she "heard Jay Ashby's arrangement, which has a different little treatment"), and goes to town with the All-Star Big Band on both "Day In, Day Out" and "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart." The album's cornerstone, though, is Wilson's first studio reunion with George Shearing since The Swingin's Mutual!, for which she chose "Blame It on My Youth" because, she giggles, "you know I'm 67 now, so it seemed like an opportune time to sing it."
Ever since news of R.S.V.P. surfaced, rumors have been flying that Wilson, recently added to the National Endowment of the Arts' elite list of Jazz Masters, is ready to hang up her skates. "I doubt," she speculates, "that this is my last album, but I'm getting very close to my last appearance. I'm not going to record anymore with Ramsey. We have three out, and he and I have had a lot of fun, but neither of us wants to work that much any more!"
After a half-century in the spotlight, will retirement sit well with her? Absolutely, she insists, emphasizing, "Singing is not my life. My life is my husband and my kids and their kids. I have four grandsons. My husband says, 'You give everything to those boys,' and I say, 'Well, that's what life is all about.' In terms of my career, I've never been out there totally. I remember once realizing that I knew precisely where I'd be for the next two years and told [my management], 'This is not what I came out here to do. Back off, because I cannot live like this and I don't want it to that degree.' It's only wonderful when you can do it and love it. And you can't love it if you're doing it every day or sacrificing you're children to it. Fortunately, I've been able to cross that bar. I'm most thankful that I've always been able to keep the love of my family; most thankful that my mother and father and aunts and uncles and husband and kids never lost sight of who I was and loved me. I could always go home."
http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/jazz-nancy-wilson-1960s/
Jazz Her Way: Nancy Wilson In The 1960s
by DAVID BRENT JOHNSON
July 6, 2015
Indiana Public Media
Nancy Wilson 1960s
Photo: Album cover art
Singer Nancy Wilson arrived in the twilight years of the jazz and popular song’s mid-20th-century golden age and managed to establish herself as one of the era’s most successful and prolific artists,
Nancy Wilson, jazz singer–that simple description is one that Wilson sometimes eschewed in the 1960s, and one that jazz critics of the era sometimes were reluctant to apply as well. Looking back now, though, and listening to the records she made with Cannonball Adderley, Hank Jones, George Shearing, Gerald Wilson, and others, it seems indisputable. But Wilson’s sound did indeed transcend genres; as jazz blogger Marc Myers has noted, “Her polite, sultry style, her confident phrasing, and her exciting delivery paved the way for Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and so many other female pop and soul vocalists.” Her narrative drive and tone also expanded her appeal beyond jazz audiences; at the height of her success in the 1960s, Time Magazine wrote that “She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller.” What Nancy Wilson sang in those years was jazz her way.
“Crisp And Clear As A Bell”
Wilson was born in Ohio in 1937 and grew up outside of Columbus, one of six children. Little Jimmy Scott, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan were all influences in her youth, and at age 15 she began singing on a local television show. She dropped out of college in 1956 and performed for two years with Rusty Bryant’s big band, then met saxophonist Cannonball Adderley in New York City, “at the corner of 52nd Street and Broadway, what a cliché,” as she laughingly told Myers in 2010. Adderley would prove instrumental in promoting Wilson’s career, introducing her to his agent, John Levy, and eventually recording a landmark album with her. After working as a telephone operator and secretary, singing in nightclubs in the evenings, and briefly moving back to Ohio, Wilson finally began to make albums under her own name for Capitol Records, scoring an early hit with “Guess Who I Saw Today,” which would become one of her signature songs.
Wilson arrived in the twilight years of the jazz and popular song’s mid-20th-century golden age and managed to establish herself as one of the field’s most successful and prolific artists of the 1960s, with an engaging sound that eluded genre definition, blending big-band and small-group elements with pop orchestration and doses of soul that could be both big-city hip and suburban cool. Still, jazz was almost always a primary ingredient in her mix. Her second album, Something Wonderful, found her in the veteran company of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and arranger Billy May, and her third album brought her together with pianist George Shearing, whose long-popular quintet provided a lightly-swinging and inviting backdrop for the young singer. The two formed an easy musical camaraderie, and further demonstrated their simpatico amiability in a blindfold test for Leonard Feather in a 1961 issue of DownBeat. Feather praised their album, The Swingin’s Mutual, as “one of the most logical and successful collaborations of the last year.”
Not all of the reception for The Swingin’s Mutual was positive; DownBeat reviewer Barbara Gardner gave the album a lukewarm review, criticizing what she called Shearing’s “thoroughly-stylized society piano group,” but praised Wilson’s singing, saying
Here are pipes tailor-made for good, emotion-charged blasting and withering story-telling. Her voice is crisp and clear as a bell. It can stand out over the instrumentation or it can melt into the group. Her diction and enunciation are perfect without sounding pedantic. Her tone is sharp without that piercing, cutting edge that plagues so many female vocalists.
Ebony Star
Wilson’s next album teamed her up with the musician who helped launch her career in 1959—-saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who had worked with Miles Davis, helped bring other talents such as guitarist Wes Montgomery into the limelight, and was now leading his own prominent soul-jazz group. The recording Wilson and Adderley made has become a jazz vocal classic, and it spawned a hit song, a cover of Buddy Johnson’s 1955 composition “Save Your Love For Me,” frequently covered by jazz singers today on the strength of Wilson and Adderley’s 1961 recording.
The Shearing and Adderley collaborations helped make Wilson a star on the rise in the early 1960s, and in December of 1963 she landed a profile in the pages of Ebony, black America’s answer to Life Magazine. “Nancy’s fame today is spreading like a wind-swept fire in a dry California canyon,” the article proudly proclaimed:
She sings to devotees in New York’s Basin Street East, Chicago’s Mr. Kelly’s, Hollywood’s Crescendo, the Carib-Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Waldorf in Santiago, Chile, the Copacabana in Rio de Janiero, and other spots from Detroit to Venezuela.
In addition to images of the singer at home in Los Angeles with her husband Kenny Dennis, who was also her drummer at the time, and their child and dog, the article also included photographs of her collaborating with yet another notable jazz figure, big bandleader and arranger Gerald Wilson, for an album called Yesterday’s Love Songs–Today’s Blues. Dubbed “loud and swinging” by modern-day critic Will Friedwald, the record also showcased Wilson’s perennial strength with a ballad on “Never Let Me Go.”
Wilson’s Hollywood Way
Wilson was a dynamic live performer whose visual appeal drew on more than just her attractive looks; she had a natural theatrical flair and a comfort on camera that led to numerous television appearances in the 1960s and beyond. “Audiences want to see a song as well as hear it,” she told Marc Myers in 2010. A 1965 DownBeat review by Leonard Feather of a concert at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles with Gerald Wilson praised the “extraordinary demonstration of the attainment, by a splendid singer, of an almost unprecedented mixture of commercial appeal, physical and musical charm, and artistic integrity.” We’ll hear an example of Wilson performing live around this time, as part of an all-star 1964 extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl put on to help oppose a California state ballot initiative that would nullify the state legislature’s attempts to end discrimination in housing. It was just one of many activities that Wilson participated in to help the civil-rights movement. Though the initiative passed, it was later overturned by the California Supreme Court.
Hollywood figured in another Wilson project of this period, Hollywood My Way, an LP of songs drawn from movies, which had been preceded by another thematic album, called Broadway My Way. Wilson was beginning to venture more often into the era’s contemporary pop repertorie, but she would stay heavily invested in standards as well–and in these years Broadway and the movies were still contributing new songs that would become standards.
“A Song Stylist”
As the 1960s progressed Wilson stayed in the spotlight, both as a singer and a popular-culture figure on television. She was featured once again in the pages of Ebony, in a May 1966 profile with the headline, “Pretty singing star is businesswoman with her feet firmly on the ground.” And that was perhaps key to the image of Wilson in these turbulent years, as a singer who could embody big-city hip and suburban cool and sound somehow engaged and reassuring at the same time—-emotionally alive, but in control. The article also highlighted her television appearances, domestic life, and emblems of success such as her home and swimming pool.
By now Wilson was cutting down her time on the road, and continuing to downplay any jazz-singer labels, but she continued a prolific recording schedule for Capitol Records, with jazz gems among them such as her collaborations with arrangers Billy May and Oliver Nelson. As the 1960s ended she made one last jazz-centered recording, in a quartet setting with pianist Hank Jones. With the arrival of the 1970s, her music would take a soul-pop turn, and jazz truly would disappear from her sound, though she would return to it in later years. She appeared on numerous TV shows, and she also became familiar to many NPR listeners in the 1990s as the host of Jazz Profiles. She still displayed ambivalence towards the jazz singer label, telling Marc Myers, “I just tell people I’m a song stylist. A song stylist allows me the freedom to sing anything I want. If the lyrics and melody please me, then that should be the only criteria for what I choose to sing.”
Jazz Her Way, Extended
Read Marc Myers’ 2010 interview with Nancy Wilson
Hear Wilson in the previous Night Lights show Jazz Women Of The 1960s
Watch Nancy Wilson on a 1962 episode of Jazz Scene USA:
Nancy Wilson talking to Leonard Feather in 1961 during a DownBeat blindfold test:
Let’s get it straight about the jazz singer thing. I don’t appreciate the label, definitely, but let’s face it: some things I do are very jazz-oriented and some are not… let’s just say I am not exclusively a jazz singer. When you say you’re not a jazz singer, some people take that to mean you don’t like it. I happen to love it; it’s just that I happen to know that on some things I am not singing jazz, because there’s very little inventiveness. That’s all I meant.
Music Heard On This Episode:
- Read Marc Myers’ 2010 interview with Nancy Wilson
- Hear Wilson in the previous Night Lights show Jazz Women Of The 1960s
What a Little Moonlight Can Do
Nancy Wilson — Something Wonderful (Blue Note, 2004)
David Brent Johnson
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Brent Johnson moved to Bloomington in 1991. He is an alumnus of Indiana University, and began working with WFIU in 2002. Currently, David serves as jazz producer and systems coordinator at the station. His interests include literature, history, music, writing, and movies.
https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/nancy-wilson
NEA Jazz Masters
Nancy Wilson
Vocalist, Broadcaster
2004 NEA Jazz Master
Born on February 20, 1937 in Chillicothe, OH
Interview
"For my name to be added to the prestigious array of artists who have received this award is truly an honor. The NEA is one of the few organizations that have been there for jazz and for that I am truly grateful. This art form does not garner the recognition it so rightfully deserves. May the NEA and its supporters be there to foster and provide the assistance for future generations to come. I thank you." --Nancy Wilson
Nancy Wilson first found her voice singing in church choirs, but found her love of jazz in her father's record collection. It included albums by Jimmy Scott, Nat "King" Cole, Billy Eckstine, Dinah Washington, and Ruth Brown; this generation of vocalists had a profound influence on Wilson's singing style. She began performing on the Columbus, Ohio, club circuit while still in high school, and in 1956 she became a member of Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Band.
She also sat in with various performers, such as Cannonball Adderley, who suggested that she come to New York. When Wilson took his advice, her distinctive voice enchanted a representative from Capitol Records and she was signed in 1959. In the years that followed, Wilson recorded 37 original albums for the label. Her first hit, "Guess Who I Saw Today," came in 1961. One year later, a collaborative album with Adderley solidified her standing in the jazz community and provided the foundation for her growing fame and career. During her years with Capitol, she was second in sales only to the Beatles, surpassing Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, and even Nat "King" Cole.
Wilson also has worked in television, where in 1968 she won an Emmy Award for her NBC series, The Nancy Wilson Show. She has performed on The Andy Williams Show and The Carol Burnett Show and has appeared in series such as Hawaii Five-O, The Cosby Show, Moesha, and The Parkers.
Although she often has crossed over to pop and rhythm-and- blues recordings, she still is best known for her jazz performances. In the 1980s, she returned to jazz with a series of performances with such jazz greats as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Hank Jones. And to start the new century, Wilson teamed with pianist Ramsey Lewis for a pair of highly regarded recordings.
She has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards and honorary degrees from Berklee School of Music and Central State University in Ohio. Wilson also hosted NPR's Jazz Profiles, a weekly documentary series, from 1986 to 2005.
Selected Discography
Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, Capitol, 1962
Yesterday's Love Songs -- Today's Blues, Capitol, 1963
But Beautiful, Blue Note, 1969
Ramsey Lew is & Nancy Wilson, Meant To Be, Narada, 2002
R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal), MCG Jazz, 2004
Interview by Molly Murphy with Dan Stone
January 11, 2007
FIRST AUDITION
Q: Tell me about the contest you participated in when you were in high school.
Nancy Wilson: Actually, I didn't compete. I went and auditioned. I represented my high school. Now, that's where the arrogance comes in. I went down and actually I played a little piano then. I sang a song that I had written and they listened. We had about seven or eight major high schools in the city [Columbus, Ohio]. Each was to send someone to represent their school and those seven or eight were to compete in this contest, sponsored by the television station. So they asked me if I would not compete, you know, that I was so much better than everybody else who was doing it so they wanted to give me a TV show. "We don't want you to do that. Just come on over here. We'll give you the TV show." So I never did. I have no idea who won the contest or whatever transpired with the contest.
Q: They did that based on you playing and singing one song?
Nancy Wilson: Based on me singing one song.
Q: Do you remember what the song was? You wrote it?
Nancy Wilson: I don't remember -- something about marriage. I can't remember but it was one of the few songs I ever wrote. I think I've only written one since then but I found out then that I really can't write. I mean, it was really easy not to do it. They did just ask me not to compete and would I come on and do these 15 minutes, twice a week after the news? Basically, people would phone in or write in requests, or [ask] if I would sing something for their birthday or their anniversary or whatever.
I had a ball. It was good, it was good. From there, I worked with Sir Raleigh Randolph and the Sultans of Swing, a big 18-piece band...I used to have one of these little net gowns and was shaking the maracas. I graduated from high school. Oh, I worked at a place, the Club Regal. I loved it and there was a great pianist there named Bobby Shaw. I stayed there for a long time and I was able to get my drivers license within a few weeks after I started working at the Regal, at 15, because I was working. My dad stayed home and my younger brother was my bodyguard. You know, he was only 14, [but] that was in the days when you could do that. And I enjoyed it. I loved it. It was a great little bar, the Club Regal.
I worked every club on the east side and north side of Columbus, Ohio, from the age of 15 until I graduated from high school. I was 17. On my prom night I went to the Club Caroline and sat in with Rusty Bryant's band. He was at my house the next day asking my father if I could go on the road, which I said no to, because I was going to school. I went on to college for a while and realized it didn't make sense. I was on scholarship--tried it, and was a Dean's list student -- but the work was there. It was very difficult to stay in school when I could already be working and doing things. So I went on the road with Rusty Bryant's band and we traveled and toured the Midwest.
INFLUENCES
Q: What were you listening to around that time -- who were your influences and were they vocalists or instrumentalists?
Nancy Wilson: Vocalists. Little Jimmy Scott. I sound just like Jimmy Scott. I listened to a lot of Billy Eckstine, basically male influences, when I was younger. This is before 15, because my father was the one who would go buy the records. I heard a lot of Nat Cole. I heard Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton's Big Band. Then his things when he started recording by himself. The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little Esther. That's where I heard the females, at that juke joint.
Q: With some of those influences that you mentioned, can you talk about what appealed to you in their sound, like Little Jimmy Scott, Dinah Washington?
Nancy Wilson: The way they delivered the lyric. I understood every word.
Q: So was it the same in all of them?
Nancy Wilson: Dinah Washington had a great deal of humor. If I were to describe myself, I'd say there's a lot of Dinah -- Dinah's humor. I don't sound that much like Dinah although people compared me to her. I think that the chit-chat, the general humor, is a lot of Dinah. The overall look would be Lena Horne. The sound is Jimmy Scott. So it's a combination of things and the bottom line: by osmosis. I became me from listening, absorbing things from everybody. In my mid-teens I really heard Sarah for the first time. Biggest number I ever sang in high school was "I Ran All The Way Home." That's when my high school got to know who I was, [during] my first year in high school. "Ran All The Way Home," Sarah Vaughan. I got to hear her, my very first album. I'd been singing "Guess Who I Saw Today" since I was 15 -- Carmen McRae.
Q: Do you remember first hearing that piece?
Nancy Wilson: No. I know the album. I remember listening to it in the basement. By Special Request was the name of the album. I was 15 years old then. I don't remember ever trying to sound like anybody.
Q: You just absorbed.
Nancy Wilson: I think by osmosis. I loved the lyric and I've always wanted to tell the story. And that's what I got. I thought that Little Jimmy Scott, his bending -- it was just fun. I enjoyed listening to him. I still do. I remember he [Little Jimmy Scott] recorded an album on the Ray Charles' label. I had never heard him sing this song -- I know that he'd not heard me sing it -- and when I heard it, the first 16 bars were identical to mine. We just approached the music the same way, although I didn't know Jimmy. I didn't meet Jimmy until many, many years later. I've only met Jimmy in the last 10, 12 years because he wasn't on the scene for a long time.
STARTING IN NEW YORK CITY
Q: You met your manager [and NEA Jazz Master] John Levy in 1959. How did that come about?
Nancy Wilson: I'd finally decided that I'm going to New York. I'm giving it six months. In six months I need to sign -- be with John Levy. I mean that was the prerequisite for going to New York, to get John Levy as my manager.
I'd been singing for a long time, at that point. Professionally. I knew who John Levy was. The man had George Shearing, he had Ramsey Lewis at that time, he had The Three Sounds, he had Dakota Staton, he had Ahmad Jamal. His stable was filled with people that I respected.
But long before John ever met me he had my music in his office. Everybody had been telling him about this kid in Columbus so he kind of was waiting for me to get there. And I was waiting to be formed -- to know who I was inside -- and decided that I would go to New York. I went, got a job immediately in the garment district. I worked for the Triangle Handbag Company. Didn't like that very much.
So I stayed in the garment district for just a minute and [then] went to the New York Institute of Technology. They had an ad out and the secretary walked out the next day so I ended up being secretary. They freed me up to meet John, to work to have gigs at night. My daytime job was from 12 to 8, so I was able to work four nights a week. Once we got established, they allowed me to do my photo shoot, were okay with me going to California to record.
Within a matter of a month or so after I got to New York...I were making the rounds of some of the little places. One of them was the Blue Morocco in the Bronx on Boston Post Road. Irene Reid was the headliner. She was the singer who was there every weekend. I sat in and a couple of days after that Irene Reid broke her leg. The club called me to come fill in for her while she was out -- so I had a job night and day. That first week, I had already run into Nat and Cannon and had been out to the house. I said, "Cannon, I'm working," so they called and told John where I was. I wasn't there a but a week or so and John came up and said, "I'll call you tomorrow." And he did. Within a matter of a few days we were in the studio with Ray Bryant, his trio.
We did four sides and they were only sent to one person. We'd already talked about it. Capitol Records was the label we wanted. If you're going to do it, it was the singer's label, it truly was. David Cavenaugh was the producer we wanted. David produced Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Dakota, Jonah Jones. Within five weeks of arriving in New York, all of the things I set out to do were accomplished. John actually was there and did everything he said he was going to do. David Cavenaugh received the package, called John and said, "Don't let anybody else hear them."
I think the problem is that most people don't go with an agenda. I knew that I wanted John Levy. I knew I wanted Capitol. And I knew I wanted to work supper clubs as opposed to jazz rooms. It was kind of solidified. The idea, to me, if you go, is to have some names and to know where you're going and where you want to go -- as opposed to go to New York and think you can stand on a corner and sing and somebody's going to hear you. It doesn't work that way. You need something specific. You need to know who you're looking for, what your objective is.
HIGHS AND LOWS
Q: What are some of the high and low points in your career?
Nancy Wilson: I remember once working 56 nights straight, two shows a night. That was low -- the worst. That was the worst. The problem is that nobody realized that this is not what I set out to do. I didn't like knowing where I was going to be for two years in advance. It was like "no, no, no, this is going too slow. Not working." And the high point, the best night really, the night that solidified the career, was opening night at Coconut Grove in '64.
We had already broken the show in Las Vegas at The Flamingo. We knew that it was good but if it worked at the Coconut Grove -- especially since we were recording it live -- then this would solidify it. It was covered in Time magazine so that was a national night as opposed to just local. It was a great night.
Q: Did you know that it was going to be such a significant event? Were you aware of that when it was happening?
Nancy Wilson: Very much so. Walked down the hall, with a smile on my face, and here we go. This is it. Didn't know what it was like to have butterflies. I've never been nervous, not about singing. I didn't know you were supposed to be nervous. You know, everybody's always saying well, "Aren't you nervous before?" No, not really. I guess when you start so young, you never learn about those fears. You don't get butterflies in your stomach when you've been standing in front of people since you were three doing it.
ESTABLISHING HERSELF
Q: So how old were you when the first album came out?
Nancy Wilson: I was not a kid. I was 22. I figured at 21, 22 I'm ready and I would be able to make the proper decisions. I had already tried to figure this thing out, had looked and seen that it really was not about show business. It was about singing. It was about doing my performance because if I had wanted to...Show business that's not my cup of tea. But I do perform, so I have to take that along with it.
As a young girl, to look at those women in the business and not see anybody really be happy makes you stop and think. I stopped and thought about how many had died before they ever reached the age of 50, never made it to 60 -- that was not something that I looked forward to. And at least I did see it. I didn't just see the glamour. I saw the fact that I hadn't seen anybody really happy. I saw women who'd been married four and five times and saw a lot of unhappiness in it. So that's what we worked hard at -- John and I -- to remain my father's and mother's daughter. That I remain me, and it is not easy. It's not easy.
Q: You mean so that no one was trying to push you to create some kind of public persona that wasn't really you?
Nancy Wilson: Right, right. I would not allow that. Actually, people didn't try to do it. People would try to get me to sign contracts and whatnot. I remember a lady, Madame Rose Brown, she had a TV show in Columbus, trying to tell me how I should act, things I would have to do. I said, "I don't have to do that." That is not a part of who I am.
And Capitol Records never told me what to sing. Nobody has ever! I get that question a lot these days, "What did they try to make you do?" I beg your pardon? You know, nobody tried to make me do anything. It was about wise selection of material and we were all in accord about it. There was nobody trying to make me somebody else.
Q: We talked a little bit about labels and how everybody likes to put a label on a musician. How would you describe what you do?
Nancy Wilson: I'm a song stylist. That allows me to sing anything I want to sing. It allows me to do Pop which, when I first started recording, those songs were the Pop of the day. Now those albums are in the jazz box, but they were Pop then. So it's just a question of timing. I'm still singing the great ballad, the great story, the American songbook. Nothing is ever going to replace Gershwin, Cole Porter, Billy Strayhorn. The music -- that music -- will always be. It is just marvelous and nothing is being written to compare to it. The lyric is no longer of significance to the degree that it was. It will come back, I'm certain. There are far more singers being mentioned then there were 15 years ago so, you know, it's all cyclical. Hopefully it'll come back sometime so I'll know it.
I never wanted to be this great star. I never wanted celebrity. No, that does not enter the equation at all. If I want to go to the supermarket without makeup, in jeans, I'm going. I don't travel with anybody. I don't want to ever have to be surrounded by people. That is not fun. I like privacy. I can't have that if I'm a big-time celebrity. Before I go to work on stage, I don't want anybody messing with my hair. I don't need anybody to do my makeup. I do that because that's my time and if I have somebody else in there with me, I can't concentrate. And I like silence before I go on. I'm as open and free as can be afterward but I cannot do it before I go on. I need to see people afterward.
LIVE AND IN THE STUDIO
Q: When you're telling a story, how important is it to have an audience there and to be interacting with an audience?
Nancy Wilson: Doesn't matter.
Q: So can you do it the same way, have the same amount of feeling if you're recording in a studio?
Nancy Wilson: Sure. That's where the actress comes in -- it's all about going inside and making it happen. I mean, the audience is great but if I couldn't do it in a studio, then I'm doing something wrong. I've closed my eyes in the studio and I'm there. Takes a minute, you know, but back in the day when professional people ruled the record industry, you came in and you were on it. The energy level was just so high. You'd have anywhere from five pieces to 36 pieces. At one minute after eight, the conductor would start the music. Many times we used the first take to iron out the problems, if there were any, in the score. Record no less than three songs in four hours any given night -- record an album in three nights. And we did that twice a year. Every six months there was an album released. Those of us who came along at that time have a body of work for people to judge as opposed to every two, three years now. If they're big enough, these people don't record more than five albums in their entire life where we have upwards of 70. Some people have a hundred albums out, like Tennessee Ernie Ford. It's amazing: every wonderful song I ever wanted to record I got a chance to do. So that's the beauty of coming along at the time we did, because we were able to record wonderful, wonderful songs. The songs were what mattered.
Q: So being on tour and playing to all of these audiences, was that almost a necessity, just part of the career?
Nancy Wilson: Okay, it was about the supper clubs, it was about the recording -- never about movies -- it was about television. It was about being able to go in the studio and do that job, being able to take that from the studio, put it on the floor, and then [onto] television. I always wanted to do TV -- so I did a lot of television. I loved it. We were able to cover all those bases.
Q: And what's it like to be on stage and to sort of hold an audience and be moving them, controlling them?
Nancy Wilson: I wouldn't have a clue.
Q: Really?
Nancy Wilson: No, I mean, I wouldn't know how to verbalize that.
Q: Do you get a certain energy watching your impact on people?
Nancy Wilson: Well, it's kind of nice to play a place like Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall and walk out and...the audience responds and they give you all the love that you ever needed -- before you ever sing the first note. That's great but it's not about power. I've never thought of it in terms of control or anything like that.
LUTHER HENDERSON
Q: Luther Henderson is also a recipient of an NEA Jazz Masters award and you have worked with him, so we wanted to ask you about that.
Nancy Wilson: I think Luther put that first show together, he and Marty Charnin, the one that we did at the Coconut Grove. The second one, too. Luther was just delightful, lot of fun. And I've seen him do Broadway things. I'd not been to too many Broadway shows, but anything Luther was involved in I tried to get to see. But he was just a charming, handsome, beautiful man, and fun to work with. Sharp as could be with his little beret and his ascots and stuff, yeah. Luther was marvelous; really very bright and fun, loved the music. I loved his charts.
Q: Why?
Nancy Wilson: They just were humorous and fun, light but with a great deal of harmony. And as far as writing, there was Oliver Nelson and nobody wrote any better for me than Jimmy Jones, and, of course, Gerald Wilson. The harmonic structure and the things that they would do were just great, just fun. I mean, to know when you walked in front of the microphone, that what you were going to hear in the next five minutes was going to knock your socks off, it was going to be great.
Q: It's interesting that you and Luther are almost on the opposite ends of the spectrum as far as you as a vocalist are in such a public position whereas Luther was always behind the scenes.
Nancy Wilson: Well, if you're ever saw Lena Horne, you saw Luther. He did so many of her things. And [for] so many of the young women like me, Luther was the guiding light. He was the man behind the throne. He would write the charts and put the shows together for so many of the young women who played the supper club circuit. And they were gorgeous, you know. Oh, there was Dorothy Dandridge, Joyce Bryant -- she was so fabulous, just a gorgeous woman. They appeared to be having fun and they appeared to have a life, other than Dorothy. Dorothy's life was very tragic. Lena Horne, to me, has some of everything that you need to be a great woman. She was a great Civil Rights worker, a marvelous look, and just paved the way. I'm grateful to her -- and for her.
RAMSEY LEWIS
Q: What has it been like to be playing with Ramsey on his current tour?
Nancy Wilson: This is our third album together. We did a lot of work together early on because Ramsey was with John then. But always Ramsey would go out and play. There'd be a short, brief break and then I'd go out and do my thing. We never interacted. We open together, we close together, and we've got a show. John, he'll say, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." I said, "Well, I'm not going to do much work but I will support the Ramsey Lewis album." He got to see us last fall at Monterey, at Cerritos here [in California]. He came backstage and said, "Okay, all right, I see what you mean, now and I now understand why you guys want to do this."
Q: Why?
Nancy Wilson: 'Cause we're having fun. As I say, we are interacting. We talk, we walk out together. You don't see that too often. Usually everybody goes up and does their own thing and that's it. So now, I kind of try to do a little bit from the first album -- just so people might remember the two of us. Then we do some of Meant To Be Now, open with one of those, and then we are doing things from the new album which is Simple Pleasures .
Q: And are you going to continue?
Nancy Wilson: For a little bit, yeah, yeah. We've got dates up through next year, but not a lot, you know, not many.
BEING AN NEA JAZZ MASTER
Q: We've been talking about labels, how do you feel about the label, NEA Jazz Master?
Nancy Wilson: Because of the company, I think it's a great label, you know. I remember one of the jazz critics in the city of San Francisco came to my opening night at the Fairmont and wrote this review the next day. He just did not understand, and [wrote] "they just love her." But he didn't get it and he couldn't understand why I made more money than Kitty Kallen. This is a review?
If I do something up-tempo, you can bet everything I do is jazz-oriented. Jazz people, aficionados, might not consider it such, but eventually they came in the fold. I've always surrounded myself with great jazz musicians although what I was singing might not have been considered jazz. It's probably because I did not scat in the Ella or Betty Carter tradition. Because I didn't do those things, maybe some of the jazz critics did not think that I was [a jazz singer]. But it didn't bother me. I figured if I was true to myself, if I sang the things I liked, it would touch people's heart and their ears and they would hear, and they would feel. I think that that's what a master is, if you can do that. So I am overjoyed and so pleased. As I say, the company that I will be joining is marvelous so I'm quite happy about it. It's been well worth it. This is one of the highest honors I could ever have.
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Nancy Wilson (b. February 20, 1937)— Singer
At a Glance…
Traveled and Sang
Coveted as a Guest Star and Hostess
Weathered Changes in Musical Climate
Selected discography
Sources
Nancy Wilson has been a world-renowned jazz, rhythm and blues, and pop singer for more than 35 years. Fashionable and poised, with a voice that both soothes and seduces an audience, Wilson prefers to call herself a “song stylist” who ranges freely through several musical idioms. Rather than reading music, Wilson learns each song by listening to the melody, enabling her to decide which songs best complement her rich, supple voice. An Essence magazine contributor noted that the entertainer has always defied easy labels or glib categorizations: “She is a jazz singer. A balladeer. She does cabaret, sophisticated pop, rhythm and blues. To say she is any one of these, or even all of these, is to miss who she really is—an artist of such enduring talent, class, and elegance that she doesn’t just defy the labels, she transcends them.”
Wilson is among the best known in a second wave of vocal performers who followed in the footsteps of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughn. Like those singers, she has enjoyed a long period of success before live audiences in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Wilson has also been a featured guest star on numerous television variety shows and specials, her popularity remaining constant through the decades. An Ebony correspondent concluded that she is “one of the great distinctive voices, a singer whose words are never less than crystal clear, and whose head, heart, and soul always seem totally enmeshed in her songs… For 35 years the exquisite, melting voice has ranged across the music landscape, from small jazz clubs to the main dining rooms of the casinos of Las Vegas, from America to Japan.”
Many pop singers have come and gone since Wilson found her first national audience in the early 1960s. The secret to her longevity—aside from her still-glamorous good looks—lies in her flawless styling, splendid vocals, and sensitive interpretation of lyrics. Good music, she was quoted as saying in Essence, is “what people identify me with.” Her talents brought her fans from all races before the term “crossover” had even been coined. Wilson told Essence: “I didn’t know I was a ’black artist’ until I was nominated for a Grammy in a black category.”
The oldest of six children of Olden and Lillian Wilson, Nancy Wilson was born and raised in Chillicothe, Ohio. Hers was a close-knit family with two hard-working
At a Glance…
Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH; daughter of Olden (an iron foundry worker) and Lillian (Ryan) Wilson; married Kenneth C. Dennis (a drummer; divorced, 1970); married Wiley Burton (a minister), 1974; children: (first marriage) Kenneth ˝Kacy˝ (second marriage) Samantha, Sheryl. Education: Attended Central State College, Ohio, 1955.Sang in church choirs as a child; performed in theater clubs, Columbus, OH, area, c. early 1950s; star of local radio show Skyline Melody, Columbus, OH, 1952-54; member of Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Band, 1956-58; New York Institute of Technology, secretary, 1959; club singer, New York, NY, 1959—; released firstalbum, Like in Love, with Capitol Records, 1959. Hostess, The Nancy Wilson Show, 1967-68; numerous appearances on variety shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Flip Wilson Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show, and The Arsenio Halt Show; numerous appearances on television series. Cofounder, Nancy Wilson Foundation (brings inner-city children to the country).
Member: Presidential Council for Minority Businesss Enterprises; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Operation PUSH (chairperson); United Negro College Fund; Committee for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Selected awards: Grammy Award, 1964, for How Glad t Am; Grammy nominations, 1965, for Gentle is My Love, 1988, for Forbidden Lover, and 1994, for With My Lover Beside Me; Emmy Award, 1975, for The Nancy Wilson Show; winner, Tokyo Song Festival, 1983; Global Entertainer of the Year, World Conference of Mayors, 1986; Image Award, NAACP, 1986; star, Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1990; Essence Award, Essence magazine, 1992; Martin Luther King Center for Social Change Award, 1993; Turner Broadcasting Trumpet Award for Outstanding Achievement, 1994.
Addresses: Management— Lynn Coles Productions, P.O. Box 93-1198, Los Angeles, CA 90093.
parents. Her mother labored long hours as a domestic and her father worked in an iron foundry. Often Nancy and her brothers and sisters would spend the summers at their grandmother’s home on Whiskey Run Road just outside Columbus, Ohio. There the youngster would delight her extended family with her singing.
Wilson has admitted that she has absolutely no formal voice training. Her talent was a “gift” that she simply utilized from the age of four. Very early she decided she wanted to become a professional singer. She sang in the local church choir and listened avidly to a variety of postwar black American music, including the albums of Billy Eckstine, LaVern Baker, and Nat King Cole. When her family moved to Columbus during her teens, she became host of her own radio show, Skyline Melody, in which she would perform phoned-in requests. Even then her repertoire ranged widely across the pop, jazz, ballad, and torch song categories.
Traveled and Sang
In 1955, Wilson graduated from her Columbus high school. Unsure of her future as an entertainer, she entered college to pursue teaching credentials. She spent one year at Ohio’s Central State College before dropping out and following her original ambitions. She auditioned and won a spot with Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Band in 1956, and spent most of the next three years traveling across the United States and Canada as that ensemble’s female vocalist.During that period she met jazz saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, who became a major influence on her musical career. Adderly convinced Wilson to move away from a gimmick-laden, pop performance style and emphasize a more sophisticated jazz and ballad material. Doing so, the pair sometimes performed together, including on the 1962 album Nancy Wilson/ Cannonball Adderly Quintet.
In 1959 Wilson decided to go solo. She moved to New York City with two concrete goals: she wanted to record for Capitol Records, and she wanted Adderly’s agent, John Levy, to represent her too. Meanwhile, she worked as a secretary at the New York Institute of Technology during the days and sang at nightclubs in the evenings. Wilson assumed she might have to wait months or even years for her break, but within four weeks of her arrival in the city she landed a major assignment. A New York City nightclub owner asked her to substitute for Irene Reid. Delighted with the opportunity, Wilson gave a stellar performance and was quickly booked at the club on a permanent basis. Soon thereafter, Levy came to the club to hear her and immediately arranged a demonstration recording session for the rising star.
At that session Wilson recorded “Guess Who I Saw Today” and “Sometimes I’m Happy.” Levy sent the tapes to Capitol Records, and within a week Wilson was under contract to the company. “Guess Who I Saw Today” became a modest hit in 1962, but Wilson achieved a wide audience the following year with “Tell Me the Truth.” These milestones came early in a period that can only be described as frenetic for Wilson and her drummer husband, Kenny Dennis, whom she had married in 1960. Other key events of her life at that time were the release of her 1960 debut album Like in Love and the recording of her first big rhythm and blues hit, “Save Your Love for Me,” in 1962.
Often Wilson performed more than 40 weeks per year, two shows a night, at big nightclubs such as Los Angeles’s Coconut Grove and Las Vegas’s Sahara Hotel. She was not afraid to look glamorous or to include jazz-styled pop music in her vocal repertoire. In 1964, a Time magazine reviewer praised her for her “artfully derivative jazz style,” adding: “She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller.” That year Wilson received a Grammy Award for How Glad I Am; the following year her Gentle Is My Love drew a Grammy nomination.
Coveted as a Guest Star and Hostess
By 1966 Wilson was earning in excess of $1,000,000 per year. Her popularity was beginning to spread across the sea to Japan, where she remains a favorite today. In addition to her live performances, she was sought after for television work. During the 1967-68 season, she had her own variety program, The Nancy Wilson Show. Other appearances included The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Today Show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show, The Flip Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and The Andy Williams Show. The only medium Wilson resisted was film, not because she did not want to make movies, but because she had difficulty finding roles that she cared to perform.Asked how she managed to keep her act seemingly new in light of the constant travel, recording sessions, television appearances, and demands of a family, Wilson told Ebony: “I feel that a performer owes the audience what it bought in the first place. You cannot shirk that responsibility. I don’t care how many times you’ve done an act, each time you go out it is supposed to be like the first time.”
The ceaseless round of live shows, recording sessions, and television appearances began to take a toll on Wilson. In 1970 she divorced her first husband with whom she had a son, and married the Reverend Wiley Burton in 1974. Soon she and Burton had two children together. Wilson curtailed her professional responsibilities somewhat, but her popularity remained undiminished. In 1973, for example, she undertook tours to South America and Japan, but she did not appear in supper clubs.
Wilson told Ebony that she thought the changes improved her show. “Because you’re not playing the same place two weeks in a row, you can bring a freshness to a performance,” she said. “You don’t feel that it’s stagnant because each audience is different… I used to do 28 days in a row where I had to do two shows a night. By the 15th night, it gets to you. Four weeks in Las Vegas can be painful just because of the sameness.”
Weathered Changes in Musical Climate
During the 1970s and 1980s—when electronically enhanced voices became widespread in many genres of music—Wilson resisted any innovations that might alter the sound of her recorded voice. When her U.S. record labels refused to abide by her standards, she began recording with Japanese companies. Wilson told Jet magazine that the Japanese recording technicians “allow me to sing so that I can sing. I can’t sing for a splice in the middle… When they stopped recording live, they started doing things you can’t reproduce live.” That fresh quality has been a hallmark of Wilson’s work for decades and has led to several awards and nominations.As Wilson’s children have grown, the artist has also accepted more live engagements, returning home to a spacious ranch in the California high desert 140 miles from Los Angeles. In 1987 Wilson told Ebony that she had finally achieved the kind of balance she had always been searching for between her professional and her private lives. “I’m not a show business personality,” she confided. “That whole show biz life is fine, but it’s not what I do. I sing. I enjoy that while I’m doing it, but all by itself it does not sustain me.” Besides recording, Wilson has devoted time and money to a several charitable causes, including the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, the National Heart Association, the Cancer Society, and the United Negro College Fund.
Considered one of jazz music’s “grand divas” by a 1992 Essence magazine rating of current black American singers, Wilson has brought her cool and stylish music to a new generation of listeners. In 1990 she was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a signal achievement for someone whose career has not included extensive film and television work. She has also continued to release albums, issuing her 54th full-length recording Love, Nancy in 1994.
At a party celebrating the release of her 1994 album, Wilson told Jet magazine: “My career is seriously soaring right now. I’m busier than I’ve ever been and I’m going full force. Sure I’m still trying to juggle the responsibilities I feel as a wife, mother, and a performer, but my life is great. I feel at peace with myself and that’s reflected in how I approach music.” She added: “The songs on Love, Nancy portray what each of us needs daily to sustain ourselves. The power of love really can overcome anything!”
Selected discography
On Capitol Records
Like in Love, 1959.Something Wonderful, 1960.
The Swingin’s Mutual, 1960.
Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderly Quintet, Capitol, 1962.
Hello Young Lovers, 1962.
Broadway —My Way, 1963.
Hollywood—My Way, 1963.
Yesterday’s Love Songs, Today’s Blues, 1963.
Today, Tomorrow, Forever, 1964.
How Glad I Am, 1964.
The Nancy Wilson Show at the Coconut Grove, 1965.
Nancy Wilson Today —My Way, 1965.
Gentle Is My Love, 1965.
From Broadway With Love, 1966.
A Touch of Love Today, 1966.
Tender Loving Care, 1966.
Nancy—Naturally, 1966.
Just for Now, 1967.
Lush Life, 1967.
Welcome to My Love, 1968.
Easy, 1968.
The Best of Nancy Wilson, 1968.
Sound of Nancy Wilson, 1968.
Nancy, 1969.
Son of a Preacher Man, 1969.
Close Up, 1969.
Hurt So Bad, 1969.
Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, 1970.
Now I’m a Woman, 1970.
Double Play, 1971.
Right to Love, 1971.
But Beautiful, 1971.
I Know Him I Love Him, 1973.
All in Love Is Fair, 1974.
Come Get to This, 1975.
This Mother’s Daughter, 1976.
I’ve Never Been to Me, 1977.
Music on My Mind, 1978.
Life, Love & Harmony, 1979.
Take My Love, 1980.
On Columbia Records
(With Ramsey Lewis) The Two of Us, 1986.Keep You Satisfied, 1986.
Forbidden Lover, 1987.
Nancy Now!, 1990.
With My Lover Beside Me, 1991.
Love, Nancy, 1994.
Other
At My Best, A.S.I., 1981.Echoes of an Era, Elektra, 1982.
What’s New, EMI (Japan), 1982.
Your Eyes, Nippon Columbia, 1983.
I’ll Be a Song, Interface (Japan), 1983.
Godsend, Interface (Japan), 1984.
(With the Crusaders) The Good and Bad Times, MCA, 1986.
Sources
Chicago Tribune, May 22, 1994, Section 6, p. 6.Ebony, May 1966, pp. 140-46; May 1973, pp. 30-40; November 1987, pp. 116-19.
Essence, October 1986, p. 55; May 1992, p. 70.
Jet, April 7, 1986, pp. 30-31; July 28, 1986; March 16, 1987, p. 16; October 22, 1990, p. 11; June 27, 1994, pp. 58-61.
Newsweek, July 27, 1964, p. 76.
Time, July 17, 1964, p. 61.
Vibe, March 1995.
—Anne Janette Johnson
http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/04/interview-nancy-wilson-part-1.html
April 12, 2010
Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 1)
Nancy Wilson is the last great female song stylist of the 1950s
and the first American female pop-soul singer of the 1960s. Though she
began by performing locally in her hometown in the 1950s, her Capitol
career started at the tail end of 1959, just as one era was ending and
another was beginning. Throughout the 1960s, Nancy was known for brassy
updates of jazz standards and hip pop soul and rock renditions. And yet
today, she hasn't been properly credited or
celebrated by our national cultural institutions for transforming both.
Nor has she been fully recognized for confronting and easing the racial
barriers that made the 1960s a very different world from the decades
that followed. Today, Nancy makes a select number of concert and club
appearances (she will be appearing in New York in
May). Nancy's career truly is remarkable. She recorded more than 50 albums—two albums a year for Capitol between 1959 and 1970 (her most recent
album was recorded in 2007). Eleven of her singles appeared on Billboard's Top Pop Singles chart—while 22 landed on Billboard's
Top R&B Singles chart. Nancy was nominated for 20 Grammy Awards—and
won 3. Her polite, sultry style, her confident phrasing, and her
exciting delivery paved the way for Diana Ross, Dionne
Warwick, Dusty Springfield and so many other female pop and soul
vocalists. As Whitney Houston said during a 1992 tribute: "Nancy
Wilson's artistry has outlived the trends of various decades." How true.
[Photo of Nancy Wilson by Robert W. Kelley for Life]In Part 1 of
my five-part interview with Nancy, 73, the statuesque songstress talks
about growing up in Ohio, her early vocal influences, where she did most
of her singing as a child, and how she wound up singing regularly on
local TV at age 15 in 1952:JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Nancy Wilson: I was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, but I grew up just outside of Columbus. My parents had sixchildren. I’m the oldest so I had to keep the others in line growing up [laughs]. I have a brother who is close to me in age. My other siblings are younger by 10 years or more.
JW: What did your parents do for a living?
NW: They both worked. My mom was a hairdresser. My father was a supervisor at an iron foundry. He was a strong guy—6 feet-3 inches tall and 240 pounds.
JW: Did you learn to sing in church?
NW: Not really. I learned on my own. I did sing in church, but not my mother’s church. When my fatherremarried, I was 8 years old. My mother was Apostolic— which is Pentecostal. I wasn’t allowed to sing in my mother’s church because I liked to sings songs like Margie, Street of Dreams and The Nearness of You. So I went over to the Methodist Church to sing in its choir. By the time I was 10 years old, I was the choir’s lead singer.
JW: Did you have a childhood?
NW: [Laughs] No.
JW: Did you sing in concerts as a pre-teen?
NW: Yes, in a gospel concert. With my aunt andsisters—or they sang with me [laughs]. During a separate part of the show, Clara Ward [pictured], the great gospel singer, performed. For a little kid like me who loved to sing, hearing Clara Ward was a big deal. It was so moving. I loved it.
JW: But where did you get your training?
NW: It’s all natural. I was taken to singing lessons but the teacher told my mom that my voice would soon change, so lessons would be a waste. But my voice didn’t change. The confident attitude didn’t change either [laughs].
JW: How did you learn?
NW: I listened to the radio a great deal and heard a lot of male singers. My dad listened quite a bit to recordsby singers like "Little" Jimmy Scott [pictured], Billy Eckstine and Nat Cole.
JW: When were you listening to female jazz singers?
NW: When I was a little older I would go to the nearby coffee shop where there was a jukebox. I'd listen to Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown and Lavern Baker. I loved Dinah [pictured] most of all. When I think of meand the humor I use in my songs, much relates to Dinah's approach. She was of the song, talk-singing the story—and having a ball. It’s one thing to sing. It’s another thing to have fun doing it.
JW: When I watch you sing in clips, there’s a show going on.
NW: What do you mean?
JW: Your facial expressions, your eyes, your body language, most of all your hands—you're acting while you're singing.
NW: That comes from years of performing on stage and in front of television cameras. I was always awarethat there was an audience out there and that as a performer I had to make a warm connection. Audiences want to see a song as well as hear it.
JW: What a great image.Tomorrow, Nancy talks about attending college briefly, joining a local band, meeting Cannonball Adderley in New York, working as a switchboard operator and secretary, and her critical meeting with manager John Levy.
NW: That’s why I've always enjoyed performing in smaller venues. People can see all of me there. In large venues, audiences miss the essence of who I am. Part of what I do is in my body language, my hands, my arms—all of that. You miss a lot by just hearing my voice. It’s a performance, it really is, and I love doing it.JW: Which pop singer taught you the most about phrasing?
NW: “Little” Jimmy Scott. I used to love how he madeone word sound like three, just bending the notes. I heard him when I was 10, when he was with Lionel Hampton’s band. Jimmy is from Cleveland, and my father had his early records, like The Show Must Go On and Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.
JW: You two share an artistic closeness, don't you?
NW: Oh, yes. We are very much soulmates as far as the lyric and delivering them is concerned. In 1966, Irecorded a song that I had never heard Jimmy sing. It was I Wish I Didn’t Love You So. When I finally heard his 1962 version some years later, I realized that our intros and first 15 bars were identical. We had approached the song the exact same way. We feel the same way about songs.
JW: And you both have that deep passion.
NW: Oh yes.
JW: I read you won a contest and appeared on TV at age 15. True?
NW: Actually I didn’t win that contest. Where do thesethings come from? I want to clear that up. At the time, there was a citywide talent contest in Columbus. I was sent to represent my school. But when I auditioned at radio station WTVN and they heard me, I was asked not to participate.
JW: What do you mean, "not participate?"
NW: Just that. They wanted to have a contest and felt that if I were included, I would run away with it.
JW: How did they make it up to you?
NW: [Laughs] They gave me a TV show. I sang on the air twice a week. I was 15 years old.
JW: Were you nervous?
NW: The stage never bothered me. I enjoyed it. On TV, viewers would write in asking me to dedicate a song tosomeone. I was on the air 15 minutes twice a week, after the news. The show was called Skyline Melody.
JW: Your singing career started just like that?
NW: Just like that. Career-wise, things for me have always just come and have been there. But I’ve also been very selective about what was best for me.
JW: For example?
NW: Like knowing early on that I didn’t want to go out on the national level until I knew who I was as a person. I resisted the pull as long as possible. I knew that show business was not the greatest thing for your personal life. So I waited until I was sure.
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Nancy Wilson's biggest influences were "Little" Jimmy Scott and Dinah Washington. One of the best
collections of Scott's early recordings is The Savoy Years and More. It's available at iTunes or here. Dinah Washington's recordings from Nancy's youth are on Mercury. Some of this material is out of print. But Vol. 4 from The Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury (1954-56) is at iTunes or here.JazzWax clips: Here's Nancy Wilson in 1966 with Andy Williams singing On a Clear Day. Nancy's expressive interpretation locks you in (and certainly locked in Williams), making it impossible to take your eyes off of her...
In 1992, the Essence Awards honored Nancy Wilson. Here's a clip from the event hosted by Whitney Houston...
Technorati Tags:
"Little" Jimmy Scott, Clara Ward, Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson
In Part 2 of my interview series with Nancy, the sultry recording star talks about being torn between Ohio and a bigger stage, meeting Cannonball Adderley, moving to New York, working odd jobs, and singing at a club in the Bronx with hopes of attracting one of jazz and pop's top personal managers.
JazzWax clip: To see Nancy's eyes and eyebrows in action, dig this late-1960s clip of Face It Girl, It's Over. Watch the clip once for Nancy's visual delivery—and a second time for the soulful vocal. There's a lot going on...
April 13, 2010
Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 2)
Nancy Wilson's eyes and eyebrows are a big part of her 
act. From
a young age, Nancy intuitively knew how to use them to dramatic effect,
allowing her to put more meaning behind a song's lyrics than the
original lyricist probably intended. In a single song, Nancy's eyes
convey confidence, innocence, vulnerability and passion. But just as you
become seduced by those tender 
expressions
and arched brows, Nancy tilts her head back and unleashes notes like
fireballs, hurled with enormous propulsion and precision. All of
this—the theatrical interpretation, the dynamic phrasing and flashing
doe-like glances—makes Nancy the greatest song stylist of the pop-soul
era.
As Nancy said in yesterday's installment, listening to her sing on record is only half the story. If you can't see her sell those songs with delicate body movements and facial expressions, you're missing much
of the meaning. No one else during the 1960s and beyond could match
Nancy's vocal finesse, delicate delivery or polish. Dionne Warwick,
while a fabulous studio singer, was admittedly no actress. Shirley
Bassey, though a powerful vocalist, was consistently over the top. And
Dusty Springfield, while a delightful songstress, lacked accessibility.
act. From
a young age, Nancy intuitively knew how to use them to dramatic effect,
allowing her to put more meaning behind a song's lyrics than the
original lyricist probably intended. In a single song, Nancy's eyes
convey confidence, innocence, vulnerability and passion. But just as you
become seduced by those tender expressions
and arched brows, Nancy tilts her head back and unleashes notes like
fireballs, hurled with enormous propulsion and precision. All of
this—the theatrical interpretation, the dynamic phrasing and flashing
doe-like glances—makes Nancy the greatest song stylist of the pop-soul
era.As Nancy said in yesterday's installment, listening to her sing on record is only half the story. If you can't see her sell those songs with delicate body movements and facial expressions, you're missing much
of the meaning. No one else during the 1960s and beyond could match
Nancy's vocal finesse, delicate delivery or polish. Dionne Warwick,
while a fabulous studio singer, was admittedly no actress. Shirley
Bassey, though a powerful vocalist, was consistently over the top. And
Dusty Springfield, while a delightful songstress, lacked accessibility. In Part 2 of my interview series with Nancy, the sultry recording star talks about being torn between Ohio and a bigger stage, meeting Cannonball Adderley, moving to New York, working odd jobs, and singing at a club in the Bronx with hopes of attracting one of jazz and pop's top personal managers.
JazzWax: You said you wanted to know yourself better before committing to show business. How did you discover who you were?Tomorrow, Nancy talks about the song she sang that won over John Levy, what Capitol Records' A&R chief Dave Cavanaugh told John when he heard Nancy's demo, Nancy's first album for the label at the end of 1959, and what Nancy is thinking when singing a song.
Nancy Wilson: Well, it wasn’t something that came tomind when I woke up one day. I grew up very knowledgeable about life. I was blessed with a little common sense and a family that supported me. No one in my family was in show business, but I knew the deal and knew I had to proceed cautiously. I had to be sure I knew what I wanted and that I was making the best possible choices.
JW: So you resisted the pull?
NW: I just didn’t want to be swept away by show business too soon. I was very proud of being my mom and dad’s daughter. They never really fought againstany of the decisions I made. When I was 18 years old, I decided against joining a band and went to college instead. I studied education, but the singing work was always there, beckoning. That constant lure made attending college for four years difficult, especially after having been on the stage so often when I was young. I was bitten.
JW: Did you enjoy college?
NW: Very much. I attended Central State College in Ohio for a year on a scholarship and was a good student. College had always been part of the plan forme. But no one had to sit me down with the rules and regulations about what to do after high school. I just wanted to go to college and try to live an ordinary life. At college, I wasn’t allowed to declare a major, but I did take a few music classes. To this day I still don’t know how to read music.
JW: How then do you know so many songs?
NW: The ears. If a song was played on the piano onceor a band played a song down, I knew it.
JW: But how did you capture the melodies of songs that were new when you sang them?
NW: There are only so many places a note can go [laughs]. I was a very careful listener.
JW: Did you sing in college?
NW: As a freshman you weren’t supposed to go off campus on the weekends. Which made it hard because there was always work for me singing. I was constantlybeing pulled toward show business. After my first year, the pull was too strong. I loved performing too much. So I decided to leave college in 1956 to join Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band. We toured for two years and recorded for Dot Records.
JW: How did you meet alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley?
NW: I met Cannon in 1958. Talk about a cliché—I met him on the corner of 52nd Street and Broadway. I was still with Rusty. The band was in New York to record before heading up to perform in Buffalo, N.Y.
JW: What happened?
NW: Rusty and I were walking down the street when we ran into Cannon. Rusty and Cannon knew each other. The three of us talked for a while. Cannon saidhis band was breaking up. Nat was going with Lionel Hampton and Cannon was going with Miles Davis. Soon after meeting Cannon, I saw him again in Columbus, Ohio. Rusty and I were playing at a club there called Marty’s 502. Cannon played there with Miles.
JW: Did you talk to Adderley?
NW: Yes. I knew he was managed by John Levy [pictured]. Johnmanaged all the greats—George Shearing, Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Dakota Staton and so many other superb artists. John had a huge reputation for being smart, tough and honest. So John was very much on my radar. I wanted him to represent me.
JW: Did you return to New York?
NW: Yes. In August 1959. My purpose was to meet John and get him to hear me sing. He wasn’t going to escape from this little girl from Columbus[laughs]. I took a job at the Triangle Handbag Co. for about a minute [laughs]. Then I learned the P.B.X. board, to be a phone operator. I ended up at the New York Institute of Technology as their switchboard operator and soon became secretary to the dean because his secretary quit. They were wonderful to me.
JW: How so?
NW: As things progressed for me, they allowed me time off to take publicity photographs and whateverelse I had to do. My hours were from noon to 8 p.m., which allowed me time to sing at night. They went along and helped me out. I don’t know that things would have gone my way if they hadn’t been so supportive and accommodating. They wanted to help and were very good about it.
JW: Where were you performing in New York?
NW: I would hang out at this club in the Bronx called the Blue Morocco with my roommate, Sonja La Forte, who sang with organist Johnny "Hammond"Smith. Irene Reid was the house singer. I sat in with the band a few times. One day Irene broke her leg, so the club called me to replace her. I don’t remember all of the band members but I do recall that Arthur Jenkins was on piano.
JW: What was the next step?
NW: To get John Levy up there to hear me perform. I thought the impact would be stronger if John saw and heard me rather than just sending him a demo tape.
JW: How did you get John to make the trip?
NW: Oh, that was easy. [pause... laughs]. Look, whenhis assistant is from Ohio and knows you personally, and Cannon knew what I wanted, it didn't take much. I told Cannon, “I’m going to be singing at the Blue Morocco.” So John's assistant and Cannon both called him and urged him to go. He had always been telling them, “Look, I need to see her first.”
JazzWax clip: To see Nancy's eyes and eyebrows in action, dig this late-1960s clip of Face It Girl, It's Over. Watch the clip once for Nancy's visual delivery—and a second time for the soulful vocal. There's a lot going on...
April 14, 2010
Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 3)
No other jazz-pop singer is as fluent in post-War American 
music as Nancy Wilson. She has always understood that a Tin Pan Alley
standard requires a different approach and attitude than a jazz standard
and that Broadway showstoppers have a different sound than a pop, rock
or soul hit. Remarkably, Nancy approaches each genre with a completely
different feel and interpretation. And if we're being completely 
honest, Nancy is the only classic pop singer who can deliver 60s hits
(pop, rock and soul) with complete authority and credibility. Which is
why each of Nancy's more than 100 albums stands alone as a completely
different listening experience.
Which brings me to Nancy's 47 albums for Capitol recorded between 1959 and 1979. These albums remain a staggering and stellar body of work. Every single style of music
is captured here—from jazz sessions with George Shearing, Cannonball
Adderley and Hank Jones to pop dates that showcase the latest Hollywood
and Broadway hits arranged by Jimmy Jones. There are Beatles tunes, soul
hits, bossa nova classics and offbeat r&b torch songs. Taken as a
whole, these Capitol sessions alone set Nancy apart from all other
singers. It's high time that EMI (or a more august jazz label) released
them all, remastered, in a box set, perhaps titled The Complete Nancy Wilson Capitol Recordings.
In Part 3 of my five-part interview with Nancy, the legendary vocalist talks about the song she sang in 1959 that took everyone's breath away, winning over Capitol Records, her rapid rise in the pop and jazz world, why she prefers to be called a "song stylist," and the power of luck and how she tilted the tables in her favor:
JazzWax tracks: Nancy Wilson's first two albums for Capitol,
Like in Love (1959) and Something Wonderful (1960) were American Songbook outings with Billy May arrangements. The two that followed, The Swinging's Mutual with George Shearing (1960) and With Cannonball Adderley (1961) are now jazz classics. Hello Young Lovers (1962) came next and was arranged by George Shearing.
The jazz dates are marked by sophistication, playfulness and
enormous art. Listen as she performs like the sixth instrument in
George Shearing's quintet—or how she sounds like the vocal version of
Miles Davis against Cannonball Adderley.
And then in late 1962, something happened. Dave Cavanaugh at Capitol decided Nancy needed to be singing much younger and more
exciting popular material. The result was Broadway My Way, a dynamite album arranged by Jimmy Jones and featuring trumpeter Don Fagerquist and tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins. Dig Make Someone Happy, Getting to Know You and Joey, Joey, Joey. Only Tony Bennett is Nancy's peer on Broadway renditions.
The followup in 1963 was Hollywood My Way, also arranged by
Jimmy Jones. Here Nancy recorded drop-dead versions of Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, The Look of Love, More, The Shadow of Your Smile and others.
All of these albums (except Hello Young Lovers) have been remastered and are available at iTunes or at Amazon. Do yourself a favor and download at least one of them. You'll be hooked.
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Nancy with Art Farmer and Benny Golson at the 1982 Playboy Jazz Festival...
music as Nancy Wilson. She has always understood that a Tin Pan Alley
standard requires a different approach and attitude than a jazz standard
and that Broadway showstoppers have a different sound than a pop, rock
or soul hit. Remarkably, Nancy approaches each genre with a completely
different feel and interpretation. And if we're being completely
honest, Nancy is the only classic pop singer who can deliver 60s hits
(pop, rock and soul) with complete authority and credibility. Which is
why each of Nancy's more than 100 albums stands alone as a completely
different listening experience. Which brings me to Nancy's 47 albums for Capitol recorded between 1959 and 1979. These albums remain a staggering and stellar body of work. Every single style of music
is captured here—from jazz sessions with George Shearing, Cannonball
Adderley and Hank Jones to pop dates that showcase the latest Hollywood
and Broadway hits arranged by Jimmy Jones. There are Beatles tunes, soul
hits, bossa nova classics and offbeat r&b torch songs. Taken as a
whole, these Capitol sessions alone set Nancy apart from all other
singers. It's high time that EMI (or a more august jazz label) released
them all, remastered, in a box set, perhaps titled The Complete Nancy Wilson Capitol Recordings. In Part 3 of my five-part interview with Nancy, the legendary vocalist talks about the song she sang in 1959 that took everyone's breath away, winning over Capitol Records, her rapid rise in the pop and jazz world, why she prefers to be called a "song stylist," and the power of luck and how she tilted the tables in her favor:
JazzWax: When John Levy came up to the Bronx to hear you sing, what was the showstopper?Tomorrow, Nancy talks about her recording schedule for Capitol, how she approached a recording session, why she doesn't listen to her recordings today, what the 1960s were like through her eyes, and why she was mostly unaware about rock.
Nancy Wilson: Guess Who I Saw Today. After heheard me sing that song, he told me later, he was won over. He called me the next day and said, “We’re going into the studio, and you’re going to record four demos with [pianist] Ray Bryant."
JW: What were the songs?
NW: One was Sometimes I’m Happy, another was Guess Who I Saw Today, and for the life of me I can’t remember the other two. After we recorded them, I went back to work as a secretary at the New York Institute of Technology.
JW: What happened next?
NW: John sent the demos to [A&R chief] David Cavanaugh at Capitol Records. John and I had already talked,and he knew the direction I wanted to go in. The day David received them he called John and said Capitol was interested. David also said, “Don’t let anyone else hear those demos.”
JW: A lot of dreams came true for you pretty fast.
NW: Within five months of arriving in New York to accomplish a specific set of goals, they had all been reached. John Levy was representing me and Capitol Records had signed me to a contract. In December, I recorded my first Capitol album, Like in Love.
JW: Why was John Levy the key for you?
NW: Because of his reputation. John [pictured] was known forcaring about the artist and the artist’s career, not just the money. Everyone said so, starting with Cannonball. John had been a prominent recording artist himself, as a bassist, so he knew the artist from the inside. But he had said before he met me that after representing Dakota [Staton], he was finished representing girl singers.
JW: What happened?
NW: I made him change his mind [laughs].
JW: Seriously, what was the turning point?
NW: He loved what I did with Guess Who I Saw Today. It took his breath away. I had heard Carmen McRae sing that song when I was really young. I had already been singing it for six years by the time I met John.
JW: Did other people like it?
NW: They did, but when I was young they used to say to me, “Why are you singing a song that’s so heavy at your youngage?” I said that I didn’t need to be hit over the head with a hammer to understand the pain and betrayal in that song.
JW: So where was that pain coming from?
NW: Nowhere. I just sing the song, child. I just get the message across. The song is so clear. I didn’t have to think about anything other than the story. The simplest thing to do on any song was to sing the words that were in front of me.
JW: What did John see in you?
NW: Passion. John knew I loved that song and that Ididn’t have a diva’s attitude. He also knew that I needed him to accomplish what I wanted, which was to have as many people as possible hear me sing. After all these years, we’re still together.
JW: I read that alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley warned you to steer clear of pop.
NW: No he didn’t. I don’t know where that came from. The main thing that John and I set out to do was playsupper clubs. See, when I think of voices, I think of “Little” Jimmy Scott. When I think of humor, I think of Dinah Washington. But how can you ignore Lena Horne [pictured], with the gorgeous clothes and sophisticated attitude and poise? She was my role model on stage.
JW: So there is no one single influence?
NW: Stylistically, I'm a combination of people. Not on purpose, but that’s what it boils down to. I wanted towear great gowns. I wanted to play the Coconut Grove at the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles.
JW: What’s the difference between a jazz singer and a song stylist?
NW: I have no idea. I don’t know.
JW: Whenever you’re asked, you have a strong reaction about being a song stylist, not a jazz singer.
NW: I just leave it alone. [Pause]. I just tell people I’m a song stylist. A song stylist allows me the freedom tosing anything I want. If the lyrics and melody please me, then that should be the only criteria for what I choose to sing.
JW: Did you ever have acting lessons?
NW: No.
JW: You have enormous natural ability to sing and perform in a taut, passionate way.
NW: But I don’t understand. You can’t learn that in acting school. Not as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t get it. You either have it or you don’t.
JW: You can’t teach acting?
NW: I was a professor for a minute [laughs]. I taught asinging class briefly at Cal Poly in Pomona. But I found it was very difficult for me to critique performers.
JW: Why?
NW: Because I’m of the opinion that it shouldn’t matter to you what I think. It’s what you think. Are you doing what you think you should be doing? That’s far more important than me telling you what you should be doing. It’s very important that you know who you are first.
JW: Which gets back to the point you made about coming to this discovery before committing to a life in show business.
NW: That’s right.
JW: As an artist, what are you thinking as you’re doing all the little things you do physically on stage? Is it a conscious thing?
NW: Nope [laughs]. I never think about it at all. I justdo it. And it has always been that way. It’s a gift. If I had studied how to do all those things, who would teach me? See what I mean? It can’t be taught.
JW: Were you driven coming up?
NW: I didn't have to be. When you’re a kid singer like I was and you’re singing and working on stage all the time, it’s a forgone conclusion about what you’re going to do in life. For me, the work just came. I didn’t have to hustle or push myself into situations. They were always there.
JW: But we both know that opportunity doesn’t just fall into someone’s lap.
NW: Of course not. You have to take the steps first to put yourself in the right positions.
JW: How does this play out in Nancy Wilson’s career?
NW: I thought Rusty Bryant’s band was perfect for me to hone my craft. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to go to New York sooner than I did. But I played with a lot of local bands before Rusty.
JW: For example?
NW: I remember working with a big band—Sir Rolly Randolph and His Sultans of Swing in Ohio [laughs]. I played the maracas and sang three songs a set. I was 16 years old. My dad would go with me as my bodyguard. But he didn’t have to. At age 16 I was driving and was very responsible. I was adult even when I was a kid [laughs].
JW: Were you being urged to make the leap to New York sooner?
NW: Oh, goodness, everyone was trying to get me tosign contracts and everything. I said, “No, I’m not ready. Not for the national thing.” I needed to make sure I was comfortable with me.
JW: But there must have been something else holding you back.
NW: I was a big fish in a small pond in the Columbus area. I had had a TV showat age 15. That experience did a lot for me. It gave me confidence, but it also gave me a taste of what would be coming. So I already knew and found I wasn’t impatient. It wasn't fear. It was knowledge. When you take that kind of step, there’s no going back. You’re in it. Either you’re prepared and succeed or you fall short and never get another shot. I didn’t go to New York until I was 22 years old. I worked those seven years preparing for New York.
JazzWax tracks: Nancy Wilson's first two albums for Capitol,
Like in Love (1959) and Something Wonderful (1960) were American Songbook outings with Billy May arrangements. The two that followed, The Swinging's Mutual with George Shearing (1960) and With Cannonball Adderley (1961) are now jazz classics. Hello Young Lovers (1962) came next and was arranged by George Shearing.The jazz dates are marked by sophistication, playfulness and
enormous art. Listen as she performs like the sixth instrument in
George Shearing's quintet—or how she sounds like the vocal version of
Miles Davis against Cannonball Adderley.And then in late 1962, something happened. Dave Cavanaugh at Capitol decided Nancy needed to be singing much younger and more
exciting popular material. The result was Broadway My Way, a dynamite album arranged by Jimmy Jones and featuring trumpeter Don Fagerquist and tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins. Dig Make Someone Happy, Getting to Know You and Joey, Joey, Joey. Only Tony Bennett is Nancy's peer on Broadway renditions.The followup in 1963 was Hollywood My Way, also arranged by
Jimmy Jones. Here Nancy recorded drop-dead versions of Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, The Look of Love, More, The Shadow of Your Smile and others.All of these albums (except Hello Young Lovers) have been remastered and are available at iTunes or at Amazon. Do yourself a favor and download at least one of them. You'll be hooked.
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Nancy with Art Farmer and Benny Golson at the 1982 Playboy Jazz Festival...
Programs
Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson
All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST)
- Sat: 7am to 8am
Singer Nancy Wilson hosts this Gold Medal award-winning, documentary series chronicling the people, places and events in jazz. Jazz Profiles
features jazz topics that are varied and all-encompassing, but focuses
largely on individuals. Musicians who have been featured in-depth on
Jazz Profiles include Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Sonny
Rollins, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker. The
series has covered significant anniversaries of the dearly departed, the
instruments of jazz, jazz cities, jazz families and more.
Website: npr.org/programs/jazzprofiles
Legendary Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson, To Perform Last Show in Athens
Via AllAboutJazz:
Legendary jazz song stylist Nancy Wilson makes one thing crystal clear:
If she’s going to do something, she wants to do it right. She began her
career embracing that standard, and now she’s set to end it in the same
way.
The three-time Grammy Award winner recently confirmed that after 60
years, she will perform on a public stage for the last time at Ohio
University, giving her final show in the same state that she gave her
first. According to Wilson, her idea was to come full-circle: “I’m not
going to be doing it anymore, and what better place to end it than where
I started—in Ohio.”
Her performance will highlight the September 10 gala being held as
part of the 125th Anniversary celebration of The Gladys W. and David H.
Patton College of Education and Human Services on the Ohio University
campus in Athens. The public is invited to attend.
“Ms. Wilson is one of the living legends of our time. We are
extraordinarily honored to have the opportunity to host her for our
special celebration of many years of success,” said Renée A. Middleton,
Dean of The Patton College.
Wilson was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, and by age 15 she was working
in television in Columbus. After six years of singing throughout Ohio
and the Midwest, she decided she was prepared to move to New York City,
acknowledging that she was also prepared to accept failure. “I was fully
prepared to go back home and be a big fish in a small pond . . . if it
wasn’t done right, I didn’t want to do it,” she said.
Of course, something went right; the songstress ended up becoming a
powerhouse for Capitol Records, outselling the likes of Frank Sinatra
and her early influence, Nat King Cole. In 1964, she won her first
Grammy Award for, “How Glad I Am.” She went on to win two other Grammys
and an Emmy for her own NBC show, The Nancy Wilson Show.
Wilson was a major figure in the civil rights marches of the 1960s,
and in 2005 she was inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of
Fame. Among her many other accomplishments is a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame, but Wilson says one of her favorite moments was getting a
Chillicothe street named after her. “The Hollywood Star didn’t even
touch it,” she said.
Wilson said she is looking forward to her swan song. “I just have a
feeling that I’ll enjoy it. Because I enjoy what I do, and knowing it’s
the last performance in front of a good-sized audience, it’ll just be
fun for me. It won’t be sad. I won’t feel sorrowful about it. I think
I’ll have a ball.”
Nancy Wilson will perform at 8:00 p.m. on Sept. 10, 2011, in the
Baker University Center Ballroom on the Ohio University campus in
Athens, Ohio. The event is open to the public. For tickets and more
information, visit cehs.ohio.edu/125 or Tamy Solomon: solomon@ohio.edu,
740-597-2990.
Website: http://www.cehs.ohio.edu/125
THE MUSIC OF NANCY WILSON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MS. WILSON:
Nancy Wilson - Full Concert - 08/15/87 - Newport Jazz Festival (OFFICIAL):
Setlist:
0:00:00 - Dearly Beloved
0:02:25 - A Song For You
0:06:27 - The Song Is You
0:11:01 - Put My Trust In You
0:14:44 - If Dreams Come True
0:16:16 - The Folks Who Live On The Hill
0:22:03 - Out of this World
0:28:01 - I Was Telling Him About You
0:32:25 - Forbidden Lover
0:37:49 - Guess Who I Saw Today
0:42:57 - Instrumental
0:43:32 - After the Lights Go Down Low
0:53:06 - You Don't Know (How Glad I Am)
Nancy Wilson - 'Jazz Scene USA' 1962 - Complete Show:
Host: Oscar Brown, Jr. - Lou Levy - piano, Al McKibbon - bass, Kenny Dennis - drums.
Setlist:
1- Happy Talk 2- Little Girl Blue 3- Put On a Happy Face 4- Never Will I Marry 5- Guess Who I Saw Today 6- I Believe In You
NANCY WILSON - "(YOU DON'T KNOW) HOW GLAD I AM”:
Nancy Wilson / "Face It Girl, It's Over”:
From 1968 album 'Easy'
"Guess Who I Saw Today" - Nancy Wilson:
THE MUSIC OF NANCY WILSON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MS. WILSON:
Miss Nancy Wilson: "The Very Thought Of You" - 1964:
Nancy Wilson / "When Sunny Gets Blue":
From 1962 album 'Hello Young Lovers'
Cannonball Adderley & Nancy Wilson (Full Album):
NANCY WILSON & CARL ANDERSON - CARNEGIE HALL (COMPLETE), 1987:
01:40 Dearly Beloved
03:50 Singing This Song For You
07:34 The Way It Goes
13:30 The Folks Who Live On The Hill.
18:30 I Was Telling Him About You
21:55 You Know How To Make Me Jump For Joy
25:35 Guess Who I Saw Today
NANCY & CARL ANDERSON sing the following two songs:
30:16 Now I See How Lonely I Have Been
35:11 How Long Must I Wait
NANCY'S CLOSING SONG:
40:20 How Glad I Am.
Nancy Wilson - "When Did You Leave Heaven?" - 1966"
From the DVD of Season Two (1966) of the NBC TV series "I Spy"(1965-1968). It is Episode Two, entitled "Lori", where Nancy guest-stars, & plays a jazz singer involved in a little intrigue, as well as singing three short numbers. This clip has the sultry ballad "When Did You Leave Heaven?" which was first released on Nancy's album "Hollywood My Way", also available on CD
Nancy Wilson - Full Concert - 08/15/87 - Newport Jazz Festival (OFFICIAL):
Setlist:
0:00:00 - Dearly Beloved
0:02:25 - A Song For You
0:06:27 - The Song Is You
0:11:01 - Put My Trust In You
0:14:44 - If Dreams Come True
0:16:16 - The Folks Who Live On The Hill
0:22:03 - Out of this World
0:28:01 - I Was Telling Him About You
0:32:25 - Forbidden Lover
0:37:49 - Guess Who I Saw Today
0:42:57 - Instrumental
0:43:32 - After the Lights Go Down Low
0:53:06 - You Don't Know (How Glad I Am)
Nancy Wilson - 'Jazz Scene USA' 1962 - Complete Show:
Host: Oscar Brown, Jr. - Lou Levy - piano, Al McKibbon - bass, Kenny Dennis - drums.
Setlist:
1- Happy Talk 2- Little Girl Blue 3- Put On a Happy Face 4- Never Will I Marry 5- Guess Who I Saw Today 6- I Believe In You
NANCY WILSON - "(YOU DON'T KNOW) HOW GLAD I AM”:
Nancy Wilson / "Face It Girl, It's Over”:
From 1968 album 'Easy'
"Guess Who I Saw Today" - Nancy Wilson:
The Very Best of Nancy Wilson
Copyright 1969 and 1998 Capitol Records
Nancy Wilson - "Here's That Rainy Day":
NANCY WILSON Greatest Hits Medley performed live:
Nancy Wilson - 'Lush Life' - 1965 full vinyl album:
April 15, 2010
Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 4)
As Nancy Wilson's visibility and popularity grew in the early 
1960s, so did her workload. In the days before scandals were built into
marketing plans and stadium concerts provided artists with instant mass
exposure, pop singers had to work tirelessly in hotel supper clubs and
recording studios. They also hoped their singles would win AM-radio
airplay and that they would be invited on nationally broadcast TV
specials. This is how Nancy sang her way into the hearts of millions,
becoming one of the most highly regarded song stylists of her
generation.
But such a work schedule also hemmed Nancy into near-seclusion. Most of us view the 1960s from the outside, as a time of cultural upheaval and shifting musical tastes: the
Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Motown
and Stax. But there was another 1960s viewed through the eyes of a black
female singer who was striving to remain relevant as public tastes and
song choices changed. In Part 4
of my five-part conversation with Nancy, the singer talks about her
relentless performing schedule, her recording approach at Capitol, her
growing social consciousness and responsibility, and the albums that
were a turning point for her career:
JazzWax tracks: The next phase of Nancy Wilson's recording career at Capitol was an experimental one. Different
concepts were taken on different albums. Yesterday's Love Songs, Today's Blues
(1963) was arranged by Gerald Wilson and has a decidedly introspective,
jazzy feel. Half the album featured just a big band. The other half
included strings. Never Let Me Go, The Show Goes On and Satin Doll are prime examples of this change-up session.
Next was Today, Tomorrow, Forever (1964). Here Nancy was back to a more swinging pop approach, a wise a&r
decision in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination months
earlier and the gloomy mood that had settled over the country. The
pick-me-up arrangements were by drummer Kenny Dennis, Nancy's husband at
the time. The smart mix includes Wives and Lovers, What Kind of Fool Am I, Our Day Will Come and an endearing The Good Life.
How Glad I Am (1964) was Nancy's first big hit seller. Arranged
by Gerald Wilson, the album includes the smash title song and two that Barbra Streisand smacked out of the park—Don't Rain on My Parade and People. Nancy executes both with enormous power and intensity. My favorites from this album are The Grass Is Greener, a waltz-time gem with a 1960s sound, and I Want to Be With You.
The Nancy Wilson Show! (1964) made Nancy a household name, giving listeners a taste of what they were missing at her
supper-club performances. Recorded live at the Coconut Grove at Los
Angeles' Hotel Ambassador, the album features the piano of Ronnell
Bright, who conducted the orchestra. Ronnell, who was Sarah Vaughan's
accompanist in the late 1950s and early 1960s, brings a special intimacy
to this recording.
By 1965, Nancy was bringing more soul to her song
interpretations. This is well exhibited on From Broadway With Love. The superb orchestra was arranged and conducted by Sid Feller, who brings orchestral zest to This Dream, I've Got Your Number, Young and Foolish, I Only Miss Him When I Think of Him, and a particularly rich Somewhere.
But Nancy's finest recordings for Capitol were yet to come. And after Capitol in 1979, her recording career continued another 30 years through to 2007. More reflections tomorrow.
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Nancy singing Oliver Nelson's arrangement of For Once in My Life from the 1967 album Welcome to My Love. Doesn't get much better than this...
1960s, so did her workload. In the days before scandals were built into
marketing plans and stadium concerts provided artists with instant mass
exposure, pop singers had to work tirelessly in hotel supper clubs and
recording studios. They also hoped their singles would win AM-radio
airplay and that they would be invited on nationally broadcast TV
specials. This is how Nancy sang her way into the hearts of millions,
becoming one of the most highly regarded song stylists of her
generation.But such a work schedule also hemmed Nancy into near-seclusion. Most of us view the 1960s from the outside, as a time of cultural upheaval and shifting musical tastes: the
Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Motown
and Stax. But there was another 1960s viewed through the eyes of a black
female singer who was striving to remain relevant as public tastes and
song choices changed. In Part 4
of my five-part conversation with Nancy, the singer talks about her
relentless performing schedule, her recording approach at Capitol, her
growing social consciousness and responsibility, and the albums that
were a turning point for her career:JazzWax: As you’re recording in the 1960s, female soul-pop singers such as Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield are entering your space.
Nancy Wilson: Well, yes, they were on the radio [laughs]. Radio made it possible for everyone. When Iwas coming up in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a jazz station on at least one AM radio in every city. You could hear jazz all the time on the dial, no matter what time of day. Now you have to hunt for it. Back in the early 1960s, more and more singers were being featured on the radio, and listeners were exposed to many good singers who sang many different styles.
JW: As the 1960s wore on, were times increasingly hard for song stylists with a jazz feel?
NW: I think so. If I were 22 years old now starting out, Iprobably would not choose to do what I did because the marketing is very different today. Few record labels even have jazz divisions now.
JW: Did radio allow for greater competition among female soul-pop singers?
NW: Yes. But AM radio played my records a lot. Some of the disc jockeys talked about me so much on the air it was embarrassing [laughs].
JW: Why was AM radio so important?
NW: It was the frequency that older people listened toin cars when they drove to work and teens listened to on transistor radios. AM radio was everything for artists then. It's how your music got out.
JW: Was recording 47 albums for Capitol challenging for you?
NW: Not at all. We all did it at Capitol Records—Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Tennessee Ernie Ford, DakotaStaton. Every six months you were in the studio recording.
JW: That sounds like a tight period of time per album.
NW: It wasn’t, at least not for me. It took only three days to make an album then.
JW: Three days? Would you rehearse the music beforehand?
NW: No [laughs]. I would pick the songs with John[Levy] and Dave [Cavanaugh]. Then I’d hear the chart for the first time at 8 pm on a Wednesday night or whenever we’d record. The band would run it down. That would be the first time I heard how it would sound. Then we’d record three songs a night over three days.
JW: No rehearsing?
NW: No. I’d just pick up a chart and sing it. I would know the melody lines to the songs I picked in advance, of course.I would listen to demos of the songs and have the words and melody down. I was always extremely prepared before I entered the studio. I knew the material. But my approach on a song—how I would phrase the notes, tell the story—was always decided on the spot after hearing the arrangement.
JW: Do you listen to your Capitol recordings today?
NW: No.
JW: Why not?
NW: It’s all in my head and in my body.
JW: Because you don’t like the way you sound?
NW: No, no, no. I just don’t have an appetite for it. It kind of gets on my nerves when I go to someone’s house and they think they’re doing me a favor by playing my records for me. [Pictured: Nancy Wilson in a Johnson & Johnson ad with daughter Samantha]
JW: I don't understand.
NW: I have all that music in my head. I don't have to hear it again. I know the charts. I can hear them playing and me singing.
JW: Is that true of music in general?
NW: Pretty much. I prefer to listen to books more than music. And I read. I’m more of a reader and a listener of books.
JW: What were the 1960s like from inside the music business?
NW: It was a great time. I was having a ball, especially after I really caught on in 1964. That was the year of my popular live album [The Nancy Wilson Show!]and How Glad I Am, my biggest hit. At that point, I looked back and realized how lucky I had been over four and a half short years—recording on Capitol and with George Shearing, Cannonball [Adderley], Ronnell Bright, Jimmy Jones, Gerald Wilson and everyone. It doesn’t get better than that.
JW: But you were experiencing the '60s, weren't you? Or were you always stuck in the studio?
NW: Records took only 14 hours every six months. I was in supper clubs most of the time.
JW: How often did you sing in clubs?
NW: One year I worked 48 weeks. Eventually I had to put my foot down. No more.
JW: Was there much interaction between you and the Beatles? You were both on Capitol.
NW: I love Yesterday and recorded it as well as some of their other songs. But I didn’t know them or come incontact with them. I knew who they were, of course, but I didn’t pay much attention to the whole rock scene. It just wasn't my focus. Audiences followed that but as a performer, I didn't have the luxury or the time to follow music trends closely. Few recording artists did then. You're just too busy trying to remain out there. One time I was in Japan doing an interview... [pause]. By the way, is Cream a group Eric Clapton was in?
JW: Yes.
NW: Did I know that when I was asked? No [laughs]. The interviewer asked me something about Cream and Ididn’t have a clue. It took me years to know what that question was about. Remember, I was constantly working or I was traveling to perform. The sixties for me were about work.
JW: So there were many different 1960s, depending on who you were and where you were.
NW: The 1960s were about Selma, Alabama, where I marched in 1965. Those years to mewere more about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights struggle than the music scene. As an artist then, taking such a political stand came with professional risks. But it had to be done.
JW: Did you face racism growing up?
NW: Not really. In Ohio, I didn’t grow up with segregation, and I never went downSouth until way later. So I didn’t experience what many others did. But I’m so grateful to singers like Bessie Smith, Lena Horne and Nat Cole for breaking barriers in the music industry. And on TV. I did a lot of television in the 1960s, including shows hosted by Carol Burnett, Nat Cole and The Smothers Brothers. And I had my own TV show on NBC, of course, in the late 1960s.
JW: Performing so often in clubs, did you get weary of the material you sang?
NW: Goodness no. When you pick good songs withTomorrow, Nancy talks about her view of publicity, why she never considered herself an A-list celebrity, and coming to the realization that she played a vital role in transforming America's thinking about integration in the 1960s.different paths to where you want to go, you never get tired of the material. Also, each audience is different, so the feeling in the room changes. That's where my humor comes in, making songs fun to sing, you know?
JW: Did Burt Bacharach ever consider using you instead of Dionne Warwick to record his songs?
NW: I have no idea. He was always tied to Dionne. They have a musical thing. We met once. That’s about it.
JazzWax tracks: The next phase of Nancy Wilson's recording career at Capitol was an experimental one. Different
concepts were taken on different albums. Yesterday's Love Songs, Today's Blues
(1963) was arranged by Gerald Wilson and has a decidedly introspective,
jazzy feel. Half the album featured just a big band. The other half
included strings. Never Let Me Go, The Show Goes On and Satin Doll are prime examples of this change-up session.Next was Today, Tomorrow, Forever (1964). Here Nancy was back to a more swinging pop approach, a wise a&r
decision in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination months
earlier and the gloomy mood that had settled over the country. The
pick-me-up arrangements were by drummer Kenny Dennis, Nancy's husband at
the time. The smart mix includes Wives and Lovers, What Kind of Fool Am I, Our Day Will Come and an endearing The Good Life.How Glad I Am (1964) was Nancy's first big hit seller. Arranged
by Gerald Wilson, the album includes the smash title song and two that Barbra Streisand smacked out of the park—Don't Rain on My Parade and People. Nancy executes both with enormous power and intensity. My favorites from this album are The Grass Is Greener, a waltz-time gem with a 1960s sound, and I Want to Be With You.The Nancy Wilson Show! (1964) made Nancy a household name, giving listeners a taste of what they were missing at her
supper-club performances. Recorded live at the Coconut Grove at Los
Angeles' Hotel Ambassador, the album features the piano of Ronnell
Bright, who conducted the orchestra. Ronnell, who was Sarah Vaughan's
accompanist in the late 1950s and early 1960s, brings a special intimacy
to this recording.By 1965, Nancy was bringing more soul to her song
interpretations. This is well exhibited on From Broadway With Love. The superb orchestra was arranged and conducted by Sid Feller, who brings orchestral zest to This Dream, I've Got Your Number, Young and Foolish, I Only Miss Him When I Think of Him, and a particularly rich Somewhere.But Nancy's finest recordings for Capitol were yet to come. And after Capitol in 1979, her recording career continued another 30 years through to 2007. More reflections tomorrow.
JazzWax note on appearances: Nancy Wilson will be making rare club appearances in New York on May 9th at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill and on May 10th at the Blue Note. She will appear again in New York on October 8th and 9th at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Allen Room. For Nancy's 2010 schedule, go here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Nancy singing Oliver Nelson's arrangement of For Once in My Life from the 1967 album Welcome to My Love. Doesn't get much better than this...
Technorati Tags:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wilson_%28jazz_singer%29
Nancy Wilson (born February 20, 1937) is an American singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret, pop and soul; a "consummate actress"; and "the complete entertainer". The title she prefers, however, is "song stylist".[1] She has received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".[2]
At the age of 15, while a student at West High School (Columbus, Ohio), she won a talent contest sponsored by local television station WTVN. The prize was an appearance on a twice-a-week television show, Skyline Melodies, which she ended up hosting.[6] She also worked clubs on the east side and north side of Columbus, Ohio, from the age of 15 until she graduated from West High School at age 17.
Unsure of her future as an entertainer, she entered college to pursue teaching. She spent one year at Ohio's Central State College (now Central State University) before dropping out and following her original ambitions. She auditioned and won a spot with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band in 1956. She toured with them throughout Canada and the Midwest in 1956 to 1958.[7] While in this group, Wilson made her first recording under Dots Records.[4]
Wilson’s debut single, "Guess Who I Saw Today", was so successful that between April 1960 and July 1962 Capitol Records released five Nancy Wilson albums. Her first album, Like in Love, displayed her talent in Rhythm and Blues, with the hit R&B song "Save Your Love for Me". Adderley suggested that she should steer away from her original pop style and gear her music toward jazz and ballads.[4] In 1962, they collaborated, producing the album Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, which propelled her to national prominence, and Wilson would later appear on Adderley's live album In Person (1968). Between March 1964 and June 1965, four of Wilson's albums hit the Top 10 on Billboard's Top LPs chart. In 1963 "Tell Me The Truth" became her first truly major hit, leading up to her performance at the Coconut Grove in 1964 – the turning point of her career, garnering critical acclaim from coast to coast.[8] TIME said of her, "She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller."[9] In 1964 Wilson released what became her most successful hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am", which peaked at No. 11. From 1963 to 1971 Wilson logged eleven songs on the Hot 100, including two Christmas singles. However, "Face It Girl, It's Over" was the only remaining non-Christmas song to crack the Top 40 for Wilson (#29, in 1968).
After making numerous television guest appearances, Wilson eventually got her own series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968), which won an Emmy.[4] Over the years she has appeared on many popular television shows from I Spy (more or less playing herself as a Las Vegas singer in the 1966 episode "Lori", and a similar character in the 1973 episode "The Confession" of The F.B.I.[10]), Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Jack Paar Program, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (1966), The Danny Kaye Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Kraft Music Hall, The Sinbad Show,[4] The Cosby Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover, and recently Moesha, and The Parkers.[8][11] She also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffith Show, The Tonight Show, The Arsenio Hall Show and The Flip Wilson Show.[4] She was in the 1993 Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man and in the film, The Big Score. She also appeared on The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dime Telethon.[4] She was signed by Capitol Records in the late 1970s and in an attempt to broaden her appeal she cut the album Life, Love and Harmony, an album of soulful, funky dance cuts that included the track "Sunshine", which was to become one of her most sought-after recordings (albeit among supporters of the rare soul scene with whom she would not usually register). In 1977 she recorded the theme song for The Last Dinosaur, a made-for-TV movie which opened in theaters in Japan.
In the 1980s, she recorded five albums for Japanese labels because she preferred recording live, and American labels frequently did not give her that option. She gained such wide popularity that she was selected as the winner of the annual Tokyo Song Festivals.[4]
In 1982 she recorded with Hank Jones and the Great Jazz Trio. In that same year she recorded with Griffith Park Band whose members included Chick Corea and Joe Henderson. In 1987 she participated in a PBS show entitled Newport Jazz ‘87 as the singer of a jazz trio with John Williams and Roy McCurdy.[7]
In 1982 she also signed with CBS, her albums here including The Two of Us (1984), duets with Ramsey Lewis produced by Stanley Clarke; Forbidden Lover (1987), including the title-track duet with Carl Anderson; and A Lady with a Song, which became her 52nd album release in 1989. In 1989 Nancy Wilson in Concert played as a television special.[4]
In the early 1990s, Wilson recorded an album paying tribute to Johnny Mercer with co-producer Barry Manilow entitled With My Lover Beside Me. In this decade she also recorded two other albums, Love, Nancy and her sixtieth album If I Had it My Way.[4] In the late 1990s, she teamed up with MCG Jazz, a youth-education program of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild,[12] nonprofit, minority-directed, arts and learning organization located in Pittsburgh, PA.
In 1995, Wilson performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1997.[7] In 1999, she hosted a show in honor of Ella Fitzgerald entitled Forever Ella on the A & E Network.[4]
All the proceeds from 2001's A Nancy Wilson Christmas went to support the work of MCG Jazz.[13] Wilson was the host on NPR's Jazz Profiles,[14] from 1996 to 2005. This series profiled the legends and legacy of jazz through music, interviews and commentary. Wilson and the program were the recipients of the George Foster Peabody Award in 2001.[15]
Wilson's second and third album with MCG Jazz, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) (2005), and Turned to Blue (2007), both won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
On September 10, 2011, she performed on a public stage for the last time at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. According to Wilson, "I'm not going to be doing it anymore, and what better place to end it than where I started – in Ohio."[16]
In 1986, she was dubbed the Global Entertainer of the Year by the World Conference of Mayors. She received an award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1993; the NAACP Image Award – Hall of Fame Award in 1998, and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. She received the Trumpet Award for Outstanding Achievement in 1994.[17] Wilson received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990, at 6541 Hollywood Blvd.[18] She received honorary degrees from the Berklee School of Music and Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Wilson has a street named after her in her hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio. She co-founded the Nancy Wilson Foundation, which exposes inner-city children to the country.[17]
Wilson was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships award in 2004, the highest honors that the United States government bestows upon jazz musicians.[19] In 2005 she received the NAACP Image Awards for Best Recording Jazz Artist. She received the 2005 UNCF Trumpet Award celebrating African-American achievement, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in Chicago, and Oprah Winfrey's Legends Award.[20]
In September 2005, Wilson was inducted on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. Wilson was a major figure in civil rights marches of the 1960s. Wilson said, "This award means more to me than anything else I have ever received."[21]
Times.com, August 20, 2006: "It's been a long career for the polished Wilson, whose first albums appeared in the 1960s, and she faces that truth head-on in such numbers as 'These Golden Years' and 'I Don't Remember Ever Growing Up'. Shorter breathed these days, she can still summon a warm, rich sound and vividly tell a song's story. With a big band behind her in 'Taking a Chance on Love', she also shows there's plenty of fire in her autumnal mood".[22]
At the Hollywood Bowl, August 29, 2007, Wilson celebrated her 70th birthday with an all-star event hosted by Arsenio Hall. Ramsey Lewis and his trio performed "To Know Her Is To Love Her".
For the following two decades, she successfully juggled her personal life and her career. In November 1998, both of her parents died: she calls this year the most difficult of her life.[4] In August 2006, Wilson was hospitalized with anemia and potassium deficiency, and was on I.V. sustenance while undergoing a complete battery of tests. She was unable to attend the UNCF Evening of Stars Tribute to Aretha Franklin and had to cancel the engagement. All of her other engagements were on hold, pending doctors’ reports for that month. In March 2008, she was hospitalized for lung complications, recovered and claimed to be doing well.[23][24] In the same year, her husband, Wiley Burton, died after suffering from renal cancer.[25]
"Nancy Wilson, NPR Biography". NPR.org. Archived from the original on January 20, 2014. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Nancy Wilson (Center Stage) (Biography)". Ebony Magazine at highbeam.com. March 1, 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2014. (subscription required (help)).
"Nancy Wilson". NNDB.com. Archived from the original on September 24, 2013. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Nancy Wilson Biography". musicianguide.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2013. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
"NEA Jazz Masters: Nancy Wilson – Bio and Interview". National Endowment for the Arts. Archived from the original on March 23, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"Nancy Wilson 1937-" (PDF). ohioana.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 7, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Wilson, Nancy (Sue)". Oxford University Press. Retrieved March 16, 2014. (subscription required (help)).
"Miss Nancy Wilson Biography". Missnancywilson.com. August 25, 2004. Archived from the original on February 8, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Singers: The Greatest Pretender". Time Magazine. July 17, 1964. Archived from the original on October 22, 2007. Retrieved August 12, 2013.
"The F.B.I., Season 9, Episode 2, The Confession". tv.com. September 30, 1973. Archived from the original on November 12, 2013. Retrieved March 9, 2014.
"Nancy Wilson (II)". IMDb.com. Archived from the original on March 23, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"Manchester Craftsmen's Guild". manchesterguild.org. Archived from the original on January 17, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2014.
"CD Title: A Nancy Wilson Christmas". JazzReview.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2007. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"NPR Music - Jazz Profiles". NPR.org. Archived from the original on January 1, 2014. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"NPR Collects Two Peabody Awards For September 11 Coverage and Jazz Profiles". NPR.org. March 27, 2002. Archived from the original on May 19, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2014.
"Legendary Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson, To Perform Last Show in Athens". jazzcolumbus.com. Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved December 25, 2014.
"Wilson, Nancy - 1937". encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on April 2, 2010. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
"Hollywood Walk of Fame – Nancy Wilson". walkoffame.com. October 1, 1990. Archived from the original on February 18, 2014. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"2004 Jazz Master Fellowship Recipients". The National Endowment for the Arts. Archived from the original on February 12, 2008. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
"International Civil Rights Walk of Fame: Nancy Wilson". National Park Service, nps.gov. Archived from the original on February 4, 2011. Retrieved April 19, 2014.
"Footsteps of Civil Rights Leaders Placed in International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site". PRWeb.com. September 3, 2005. Archived from the original on September 18, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
Christopher Porterfield (August 20, 2006). "6 Jazz Singers Worth A Listen". Time Magazine Arts. Archived from the original on January 4, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
"Jazz singer Nancy Wilson treated for a collapsed lung". Old School Music Lover. April 17, 2008. Archived from the original on March 23, 2014. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
"Nancy Wilson 'doing fine' recovering from lung collapse". JET at highbeam.com. May 5, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2014. (subscription required (help)).
"Nancy Wilson's husband dies". JET at highbeam.com. August 25, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2014. (subscription required (help)).
"'Music Preview: Another side of Nancy Wilson". post-gazette.com. March 1, 2007. Archived from the original on March 16, 2014. Retrieved August 19, 2007.
"Nancy Wilson at Carnegie Hall - video". view.com. Archived from the original on March 28, 2013. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wilson_%28jazz_singer%29
Nancy Wilson (jazz singer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Nancy Wilson | ||
|---|---|---|
Nancy Wilson in 1968
|
||
| Background information | ||
| Born | February 20, 1937 | |
| Origin | Chillicothe, Ohio, U.S. | |
| Genres | Blues, jazz, cabaret, pop, soul | |
| Occupation(s) | Vocalist | |
| Years active | 1956–present | |
| Labels | MCG Jazz, Capitol, Blue Note | |
| Associated acts | Ramsey Lewis, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, James Ingram, Hank Jones, Billy Taylor | |
Nancy Wilson (born February 20, 1937) is an American singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret, pop and soul; a "consummate actress"; and "the complete entertainer". The title she prefers, however, is "song stylist".[1] She has received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".[2]
Contents
Background
On February 20, 1937, Wilson was the first of six children born to Olden Wilson, an iron foundry worker, and Lillian Ryan, a maid in Chillicothe, Ohio.[3][4] Wilson's father would buy records to listen to at home. At an early age Wilson heard recordings from Billy Eckstine, Nat Cole, and Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton's Big Band. Wilson says: "The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little Esther".[5] Wilson became aware of her talent while singing in church choirs, imitating singers as a young child, and performing in her grandmother's house during summer visits.[4] By the age of four, she knew she would eventually become a singer.At the age of 15, while a student at West High School (Columbus, Ohio), she won a talent contest sponsored by local television station WTVN. The prize was an appearance on a twice-a-week television show, Skyline Melodies, which she ended up hosting.[6] She also worked clubs on the east side and north side of Columbus, Ohio, from the age of 15 until she graduated from West High School at age 17.
Unsure of her future as an entertainer, she entered college to pursue teaching. She spent one year at Ohio's Central State College (now Central State University) before dropping out and following her original ambitions. She auditioned and won a spot with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club Big Band in 1956. She toured with them throughout Canada and the Midwest in 1956 to 1958.[7] While in this group, Wilson made her first recording under Dots Records.[4]
Career
When Wilson met Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, he suggested that she should move to New York City, believing that the big city would be the venue in which her career could bloom. In 1959, she relocated to New York with a goal of obtaining Cannonball’s manager John Levy as her manager and Capitol Records as her label.[8] Within four weeks of her arrival in New York she got her first big break, a call to fill in for Irene Reid at "The Blue Morocco". The club booked Wilson on a permanent basis; she was singing four nights a week and working as a secretary for the New York Institute of Technology during the day. John Levy sent demos of "Guess Who I Saw Today", "Sometimes I’m Happy", and two other songs to Capitol. Capitol Records signed her in 1960.Wilson’s debut single, "Guess Who I Saw Today", was so successful that between April 1960 and July 1962 Capitol Records released five Nancy Wilson albums. Her first album, Like in Love, displayed her talent in Rhythm and Blues, with the hit R&B song "Save Your Love for Me". Adderley suggested that she should steer away from her original pop style and gear her music toward jazz and ballads.[4] In 1962, they collaborated, producing the album Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, which propelled her to national prominence, and Wilson would later appear on Adderley's live album In Person (1968). Between March 1964 and June 1965, four of Wilson's albums hit the Top 10 on Billboard's Top LPs chart. In 1963 "Tell Me The Truth" became her first truly major hit, leading up to her performance at the Coconut Grove in 1964 – the turning point of her career, garnering critical acclaim from coast to coast.[8] TIME said of her, "She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller."[9] In 1964 Wilson released what became her most successful hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am", which peaked at No. 11. From 1963 to 1971 Wilson logged eleven songs on the Hot 100, including two Christmas singles. However, "Face It Girl, It's Over" was the only remaining non-Christmas song to crack the Top 40 for Wilson (#29, in 1968).
After making numerous television guest appearances, Wilson eventually got her own series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968), which won an Emmy.[4] Over the years she has appeared on many popular television shows from I Spy (more or less playing herself as a Las Vegas singer in the 1966 episode "Lori", and a similar character in the 1973 episode "The Confession" of The F.B.I.[10]), Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Jack Paar Program, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (1966), The Danny Kaye Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Kraft Music Hall, The Sinbad Show,[4] The Cosby Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover, and recently Moesha, and The Parkers.[8][11] She also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffith Show, The Tonight Show, The Arsenio Hall Show and The Flip Wilson Show.[4] She was in the 1993 Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man and in the film, The Big Score. She also appeared on The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dime Telethon.[4] She was signed by Capitol Records in the late 1970s and in an attempt to broaden her appeal she cut the album Life, Love and Harmony, an album of soulful, funky dance cuts that included the track "Sunshine", which was to become one of her most sought-after recordings (albeit among supporters of the rare soul scene with whom she would not usually register). In 1977 she recorded the theme song for The Last Dinosaur, a made-for-TV movie which opened in theaters in Japan.
In the 1980s, she recorded five albums for Japanese labels because she preferred recording live, and American labels frequently did not give her that option. She gained such wide popularity that she was selected as the winner of the annual Tokyo Song Festivals.[4]
In 1982 she recorded with Hank Jones and the Great Jazz Trio. In that same year she recorded with Griffith Park Band whose members included Chick Corea and Joe Henderson. In 1987 she participated in a PBS show entitled Newport Jazz ‘87 as the singer of a jazz trio with John Williams and Roy McCurdy.[7]
In 1982 she also signed with CBS, her albums here including The Two of Us (1984), duets with Ramsey Lewis produced by Stanley Clarke; Forbidden Lover (1987), including the title-track duet with Carl Anderson; and A Lady with a Song, which became her 52nd album release in 1989. In 1989 Nancy Wilson in Concert played as a television special.[4]
In the early 1990s, Wilson recorded an album paying tribute to Johnny Mercer with co-producer Barry Manilow entitled With My Lover Beside Me. In this decade she also recorded two other albums, Love, Nancy and her sixtieth album If I Had it My Way.[4] In the late 1990s, she teamed up with MCG Jazz, a youth-education program of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild,[12] nonprofit, minority-directed, arts and learning organization located in Pittsburgh, PA.
In 1995, Wilson performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1997.[7] In 1999, she hosted a show in honor of Ella Fitzgerald entitled Forever Ella on the A & E Network.[4]
All the proceeds from 2001's A Nancy Wilson Christmas went to support the work of MCG Jazz.[13] Wilson was the host on NPR's Jazz Profiles,[14] from 1996 to 2005. This series profiled the legends and legacy of jazz through music, interviews and commentary. Wilson and the program were the recipients of the George Foster Peabody Award in 2001.[15]
Wilson's second and third album with MCG Jazz, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) (2005), and Turned to Blue (2007), both won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
On September 10, 2011, she performed on a public stage for the last time at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. According to Wilson, "I'm not going to be doing it anymore, and what better place to end it than where I started – in Ohio."[16]
Awards and honors
In 1964, Wilson won her first Grammy Award for the best rhythm and blues recording for the album How Glad I Am. She was featured as a "grand diva" of jazz in a 1992 edition of Essence.[17] In the same year, she also received the Whitney Young, Jr. Award from the Urban League. In 1998, she was a recipient of the Playboy Reader Poll Award for best jazz vocalist.[4]In 1986, she was dubbed the Global Entertainer of the Year by the World Conference of Mayors. She received an award from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1993; the NAACP Image Award – Hall of Fame Award in 1998, and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. She received the Trumpet Award for Outstanding Achievement in 1994.[17] Wilson received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990, at 6541 Hollywood Blvd.[18] She received honorary degrees from the Berklee School of Music and Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Wilson has a street named after her in her hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio. She co-founded the Nancy Wilson Foundation, which exposes inner-city children to the country.[17]
Wilson was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships award in 2004, the highest honors that the United States government bestows upon jazz musicians.[19] In 2005 she received the NAACP Image Awards for Best Recording Jazz Artist. She received the 2005 UNCF Trumpet Award celebrating African-American achievement, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in Chicago, and Oprah Winfrey's Legends Award.[20]
In September 2005, Wilson was inducted on the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. Wilson was a major figure in civil rights marches of the 1960s. Wilson said, "This award means more to me than anything else I have ever received."[21]
Times.com, August 20, 2006: "It's been a long career for the polished Wilson, whose first albums appeared in the 1960s, and she faces that truth head-on in such numbers as 'These Golden Years' and 'I Don't Remember Ever Growing Up'. Shorter breathed these days, she can still summon a warm, rich sound and vividly tell a song's story. With a big band behind her in 'Taking a Chance on Love', she also shows there's plenty of fire in her autumnal mood".[22]
At the Hollywood Bowl, August 29, 2007, Wilson celebrated her 70th birthday with an all-star event hosted by Arsenio Hall. Ramsey Lewis and his trio performed "To Know Her Is To Love Her".
Personal life
Wilson married her first husband, drummer Kenny Dennis, in 1960. In 1963, their son, Kenneth (Kacy) Dennis, Jr., was born, and by 1970, they divorced. On May 22, 1973, she married a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Wiley Burton. She gave birth to Samantha Burton in 1975, and the couple adopted Sheryl Burton in 1976. As a result of her marriage, she abstained from performing in various venues, such as supper clubs. In this decade, she focused on her family, relocating to Pioneertown, California, to raise her children in a rural setting.For the following two decades, she successfully juggled her personal life and her career. In November 1998, both of her parents died: she calls this year the most difficult of her life.[4] In August 2006, Wilson was hospitalized with anemia and potassium deficiency, and was on I.V. sustenance while undergoing a complete battery of tests. She was unable to attend the UNCF Evening of Stars Tribute to Aretha Franklin and had to cancel the engagement. All of her other engagements were on hold, pending doctors’ reports for that month. In March 2008, she was hospitalized for lung complications, recovered and claimed to be doing well.[23][24] In the same year, her husband, Wiley Burton, died after suffering from renal cancer.[25]
Grammy history
- Career Wins: 3
- Career Nominations: 20[26]
| Nancy Wilson Grammy History | |||||
| Year | Category | Genre | Title | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Best Jazz Vocal Album | Jazz | Turned to Blue | MCG Jazz | Winner |
| 2005 | Best Jazz Vocal Album | Jazz | R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) | MCG Jazz | Winner |
| 1964 | Female Vocal Performance | R&B | "How Glad I Am" | Capitol | Winner |
Discography
Main article: Nancy Wilson discography
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Filmography
DVD concert films
- 2001: Nancy Wilson at Carnegie Hall [27]
- 2005: Great Women Singers of the 20th Century – Nancy Wilson[28]
References
- "Great Women Singers of the 20th Century: Nancy Wilson - video". IMDb.com. Archived from the original on April 4, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nancy Wilson (singer). |
- Nancy Wilson's website – Biography at the Wayback Machine (archived February 8, 2012)
- Billboard Chart History for Nancy Wilson
- Nancy Wilson at the Internet Movie Database
- Nancy Wilson at Wenig-Lamonica Associates
- Music Preview: Another side of Nancy Wilson (March 1, 2007)
- NEA Jazz Masters: Nancy Wilson – Biography and Interview
