Wilson, Cassandra

Wilson, Cassandra, American vocalist; b. Jackson, Miss., Dec. 5, 1955. She came to N.Y. in 1982, already a professional singer. Besides working with the already established Dave Holland and New Air, she collaborated with the musicians gathered around alto saxophonist Steve Coleman who were inventing a style they called M-Base. At the beginning of her recording career she was also identified with this style, a dense, funky sound, due to her appearances on several Coleman-led albums and her use of that pool of musicians on her first two albums. She started moving away from that sound on her third album, Blue Skies, a standards collection. She reverted to electric bands featuring original material plus a few standards reworked in eccentric ways. Though her career lost sales momentum, her reputation as a promising singer continued to grow, leading Blue Note to sign her. Pairing her with producer Craig Street provided the fresh start she needed, and her reworked style and focus—sparse instrumentation, laid-back vocals, and greater variety of cover material—helped her cross over to the more sophisticated segment of the pop audience. She is now one of the most popular and commercially successful young jazz singers on the scene, and her style and choice of material has become a much-copied template for other singers looking to expand beyond the standards audience.

Discography

Point of View (1986); Air Show No. 1 (1986); World Expansion (By the M-Base Neophyte) (1987); Days Aweigh (1987); Sine Die (1988); Blue Skies (1988); Jump World (1990); She Who Weeps (1991); Live (1991); Dance to the Drums Again (1992); After the Beginning Again (1992); Blue Light ’Til Dawn (1993); New Moon Daughter (1995); Rendezvous (1997); Steve Turre (1997); Traveling Miles (1999).

—Steve Holtje