NUY 40+ IN MEMORIAM- Remembering Jazz & Popular Music Legend Nancy Wilson (1937-2018)

Elegance, strength,  grace, and wit, wrapped into a honey coated song: song stylist Nancy Wilson (1937-2018)

In today's NUY 40+ In Memoriam, we take a moment to recognize the recent passage of Nancy Wilson, a native of Ohio and one of the celebrated jazz & popular music artists of our time, as she passed away late last week at age 81 in her home in Pioneertown, California. As confirmed by her manager, she had been ill for some time.   Ms. Wilson began her career in the 1950s,  with a flexible approach to her music and song choice that bridged the gap between jazz and pop in that era, and later between pop and soul in the 1960s & 70s.  In the earliest years of her career, she was the second biggest selling artist next only in sales to the Beatles. After 60 years of recording, touring, and working as a television actress,  Ms.Wilson retired in 2011.  

Nancy Sue Wilson was born on February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, the first of six children.  In the house where she grew up, she enjoyed listening to Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, and Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton's Big Band from her parents' record collection. In a 2014 interview with NEA Jazz Masters, Wilson recalled of her childhood, "The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth BrownRuth Brown LaVerne Baker, & Little Esther".  

Already a talent show veteran in her teen years having won tv show hosting prizes for local ABC affiliates, she graduated high school at age 17 and attended Central State College, an HBCU in Wilberforce, Ohio. After freshman year, Wilson left teachers' college to return to singing, touring with big bands until she moved to New York in 1959. There, she contractually booked gigs on the nightclub scene while working as a secretary for the New York Institute of Technology, later signing with Capitol Records in 1960 after collaborations with Cannonball Adderly. It was Adderly who would introduce Wilson to his management, famed jazz manager John Levy, whose company John Levey Enterprises has represented the Who's Who of jazz music including Herbie Hancock, Betty Carter, Joe Williams, Abbey Lincoln, Ramsey Lewis and others.

Wilson's records were in such demand thereafter that Capitol released 5 albums in quick succession over a 2 year period, resulting in her first Grammy win in 1964. After numerous television guest appearances, Wilson was one of the first black women to earn her own variety series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968),  for which she won an Emmy.  In addition to countless television appearances as herself in songstress mode, Ms. Wilson would also pursue acting in a smaller capacity, appearing in nearly 20 tv series from 1965-2005.

Two of Nancy Wilson's biggest songs are, "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" and her version of the standard "Guess Who I Saw Today". Wilson recorded more than 70 albums and is a three-time Grammy Award winner.  While labeled a singer of blues, jazz, R&B, pop, and soul, a "consummate actress", and "the complete entertainer". The title Wilson preferred was "song stylist".  Her many showbiz nicknames included "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".   

Her recordings were usually about romance, love, and heartbreak, but infused with strength and sass. In describing her approach to music and the impact of lyrics in the songs she chose to sing throughout her career, she told the Los Angeles Times in 1993, “I have a gift for telling stories, making them seem larger than life,”. “I love the vignette, the plays within the song”.

Ms. Wilson is survived by her son, 2 daughters daughter, five grandchildren, and 2 sisters. 

In accordance with Wilson's wishes, a family statement has announced there will be no funeral service. A celebration of her life will be held most likely in February, the month of her birth.