Wilson, Cassandra

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CASSANDRA WILSON

Genre: Jazz

Best-selling album since 1990: New Moon Daughter (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "Tupelo Honey," "Blue Light 'Til Dawn," "The Weight"

Amoody vocalist with a stylistic range encompassing jazz, blues, soul, and rock, Cassandra Wilson built a reputation in the 1990s as an astute interpreter of lyrics, a challenging but rewarding artist who informs all she sings with a deep jazz sensibility. Possessing a grainy, textured voice, Wilson wraps her supple chords around songs as disparate as rock singer Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" and the self-penned call for slave reparations, "Justice." Relying on subtle shifts of mood, Wilson sings with a slow, burning introspection that rarely gets out of control. The mood she creates on her recordings is so rich that it sometimes seems she is hiding behind it, using sonic luxuriance as a means of avoiding genuine emotion. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret her restraint as a lack of involvement; a close listen to her music reveals an artist of spirit and integrity.

Born and raised in the Mississippi city of Jackson, Wilson spent her childhood soaking up a diverse array of musical influences. At a young age she sang with her mother and grandmother in church, although she was more attracted to the jazz and pop records collected by her father, a skilled bassist and cellist who once performed with R&B great Ray Charles. After receiving a college degree in communications, Wilson moved to New Orleans and settled into a day job while performing music on the side. Relocating to New York in the early 1980s, she started performing with talented young musicians such as saxophonist Steve Coleman. Although Wilson's late 1980s recordings for the small JMT label brought her critical praise, it was not until her move to Blue Note Records in 1993 that she received popular attention.

Critics hailed Wilson's first album for Blue Note, Blue Light 'Til Dawn (1993), as an entirely new kind of jazz record, one equally influenced by pop, blues, folk, and classic
jazz styles. With its bold covers of songs such as soul singer Ann Peebles's "I Can't Stand the Rain," the album appeals to mainstream listeners not accustomed to buying a jazz recording. What critics and fans found most arresting, however, was the album's atmospheric sound, created through the use of gentle percussion, acoustic guitar, and unusual devices such as the imitation of rustling grass. Mysterious and evocative, the album conjures a magical universe that Wilson's warm, brocaded voice inhabits with a command of mood. On the title track, featuring complex key changes led by a keening steel guitar, Wilson sings with an eerie otherworldliness, sounding like a woman summoning supernatural powers. The spectral low tones Wilson employs on "Tell Me You'll Wait for Me" unmask the warmth and passion hidden beneath her carefully assembled, quiet veneer.

Wilson released a similar-sounding album, New Moon Daughter, in 1996 and gained even greater attention for her highly personal versions of pop songs such as "Last Train to Clarksville," a 1960s hit by the Monkees. Despite her interest in pop Wilson does not neglect more traditional musical forms; on her passionate version of blues performer Son House's "Death Letter" she offers glimpses of the fire raging beneath her cool facade. By the late 1990s Wilson was widely acclaimed as a master artist, and in 2001 she was named "America's best singer" by Time magazine. Despite Wilson's renown, her sedate vocal style had its detractors. In 2002 the New York Times criticized her voice as lacking emotional depth: "Because it's more sumptuous than a voice has any right to be, it wavers perilously between seductiveness and self-parody."

Still, the passion and idiosyncrasy with which Wilson pursued her recording projects seemed to belie such an analysis. Refusing to follow an easy commercial path, Wilson in 1999 released an intelligent tribute to legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, and in 2001 traveled to the Mississippi Delta, the place of her birth and an area steeped in musical history, to record an album of blues-inspired music. The result, Belly of the Sun (2002), features the talents of great but neglected Mississippi musicians such as octogenarian pianist "Boogaloo" Ames. Recording in an old train station, Wilson and her band achieve a tight, cohesive sound, equal parts funk and smoothness. Her version of the Band's "The Weight" sounds laden with the soul-weariness of a long journey, while the stirring "Justice" imparts a social awareness rarely encountered in current pop and jazz music.

Through her talent and courageous musical exploration, Cassandra Wilson has fashioned one of the most successful careers in contemporary jazz. While her tastes are markedly eclectic, Wilson informs all of her material with a tone of reverence and hushed passion. Challenging musical boundaries, she has redefined the role of the jazz vocalist in the twenty-first century.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Blue Light 'Til Dawn (Blue Note, 1993); New Moon Daughter (Blue Note, 1996); Traveling Miles (Blue Note, 1999); Belly of the Sun (Blue Note, 2002).