Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy-winning jazz vocalist who collaborated with the Roots, Angelique Kidjo, and others, died Wednesday. Her manager, Robert Torre, told New Jersey radio station WBGO that Wilson “transitioned peacefully at home, surrounded by family, close friends, and her manager,” but did not cite a cause of death. She was 70.
Music was a mainstay in Wilson’s life from childhood. She was born to Herman B. Fowlkes, a jazz-guitarist father, and elementary school teacher on Dec. 4, 1955, in Jackson, Mississippi. She was playing piano at age 6, guitar at 12, and singing professionally by her late teens, according to her official website. She received a college degree in mass communications from Jackson State University and began singing jazz in her twenties.
She co-founded the M-Base Collective, which springboarded her to the national stage, with saxophonist Steve Coleman after moving to New York in 1982 with her then-husband, Anthony Wilson, who was once a weekend announcer on WBGO.
“From Steve Coleman, I learned to tear a piece of music apart and get away from standard approaches,” Wilson told Time in 2001. “I learned about cycles of rhythm, being able to hear cues in the rhythms instead of chords. And I learned to hear the layering of rhythms. Before that, I had been only studying chords and standard A-A-B-A structured songs. But after Steve, I was able to return to standard material whenever I wanted to and find so many other things to do that I couldn’t have imagined before.”
She released her debut solo album, Point of View, in 1986, singing songs she wrote and co-wrote alongside renditions of Miles Davis’ “Blue in Green” and a song made popular by Billie Holiday, “I Wished on the Moon.” She explored what The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide described as “harmolodic jazz funk” on Jumpworld (1990) and deeper improvisation on She Who Weeps (1991), which includes a stirring rendition of “Body and Soul.”
A turning point arrived when she sought an acoustic backdrop for her singing on her 1992 album, Blue Light ’til Dawn, her sparsely arranged Blue Note Records debut. In addition to Wilson’s originals, the album found her singing renditions of songs by Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Ann Peebles. She continued on this path with New Moon Daughter in 1995, peppering her excellent originals (notably “Little Warm Death” and “Solomon Song”) with covers of Neil Young, U2, Hank Williams, and Monkees tunes.
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“I continue to choose the path I take musically,” she told The New York Times in 1994. “And it’s not motivated by becoming famous or having a lot money, or any other pop motivation.”
Her next album, Rendezvous (1997), found her giving new arrangements to standards, notably a marvelous “Tennessee Waltz,” with pianist Jacky Terrasson. “She draws things out of these songs that even the composers wouldn’t recognize,” the Rolling Stone guide wrote as a compliment. She explored Miles Davis’ catalog on Traveling Miles (1999). Later, she returned to jazz standards on Loverly. She released the final solo album of her career, Coming Forth by Day, in 2015. It was an homage to Billie Holiday, released on what would’ve been Holiday’s 100th birthday.
As a collaborator, Wilson recorded albums with Coleman, Greg Osby, and Wynton Marsalis. With Marsalis, she portrayed the character Leona in the recoding of his Blood on the Fields oratorio, the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize.
She appeared as a guest on the Roots’ “Silent Treatment” and “One Shine.” She also recorded variously with Terence Blanchard, Olu Dara, Charlie Haden, Elvis Costello, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Luther Vandross, among others. Her own 2010 album, Silver Pony, featured several notable guests including John Legend, Jon Batiste, and Ravi Coltrane.
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Wilson was nominated for four Grammys, winning twice, in 1997 for her New Moon Daughter album and in 2009 for Loverly, both in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category. She also won the Django D’Or, the Edison Music Award, and a Mississippi Blues Trail marker.
She connected her success to the spirit of jazz in its original form. “I think people tend to forget what jazz was like in the beginning,” she told the Times. “It’s not a form of music that came out canonized and etched in stone. It comes from people absorbing what they live. So I don’t have a problem doing music that’s popular. Billie Holiday and even Charlie Parker interpreted what was known as the popular music of that time. I don’t see any difference between that and what I’m doing.”
