Multi-genre music artist Cassandra Wilson was lying on a couch in 1993 when her new producer Craig Street asked her how she felt about the music she had grown up with in Mississippi. She told him about playing Joni Mitchell songs on her guitar while attending Millsaps College in Jackson, where she was born, and then asked, “But how am I going to be a jazz vocalist and do the folk thing?”
“Why not?” he asked her. “It’s who you are.”
Taking his advice, Wilson decided to “come out of the closet,” as she put it in a 2024 interview with JazzTimes.
While working with Street, Wilson put out two albums, “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn” in 1993 and “New Moon Daughter” in 1995. The latter earned her a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Wilson went on to earn a second Grammy win in 2009 for her album “Loverly.”
On Tuesday, Sept. 1, Wilson died peacefully surrounded by family, close friends and her manager. Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard confirmed her death, which Jackson Mayor John Horhn announced in a statement on Wednesday.
Musically, Wilson experimented with different sounds, at one point taking inspiration from artists like Billie Holiday and Miles Davis, who let notes linger to showcase the roundness of their voices. “Being a Southerner, I’m probably predisposed to that slower, thicker sort of sound; that ‘built for comfort not for speed’ kind of thing,” she told JazzTimes.
Her status as a Southerner was part of her music identity, with the artist incorporating elements of the blues, which originated in the Mississippi Delta, in many of her tracks.
“When I went back to the blues in Mississippi, that changed how I sing,” she continued. “I think a lot of jazz musicians are afraid of the blues, because there’s a certain emotional vulnerability when you get into this material. It’s so bare that you really have to be inventive; you can’t rely on the usual jazz vocabulary of quoting melodies and running scales and going, ‘scooby-dooby-doo.’”
Although Wilson spent time living in New Orleans and New York, she spent the last years of her life calling Jackson home.
“Jackson has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice,” Mayor Horhn said on Wednesday. “Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her wherever her music reached.”
“She built a remarkable career rooted in jazz, blues, gospel, folk and the many traditions that shape our state’s musical identity,” Horhn added. “Her work had (a) rare depth of character and a profound understanding of how music moves people, tells stories and connects generations.”
Cassandra Wilson was the third child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., who was originally from Chicago. Wilson grew up in Mississippi playing piano from age 6 to 13, and she played clarinet in her middle school marching band before deciding to learn guitar. This pathway led to her becoming one of the founding members of the M-Base collective in the 1980s alongside other Black artists like Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Geri Allen, Robin Eubanks and Greg Osby.
Over time, she made a career for herself that spanned more than 16 albums, a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, an honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee College of Music, and a number of other awards and accolades.
“In a lot of ways—though I say this with some trepidation—she may be one of the greatest (jazz singers) of all time,” Joseph Henry “T Bone” Burnett, who produced Wilson’s seventh Blue Note album, told JazzTimes in 2024.
“Cassandra Wilson showed the world the richness of Jackson and Mississippi music,” Mayor Horhn said in his Wednesday statement. “Her legacy will continue to be heard in the artists she inspired and the pride she brought to her hometown.”
For more information on Cassandra Wilson, visit cassandrawilson.com.
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