Legendary jazz singer Cassandra Wilson passed away in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, surrounded by her family, close friends, and her manager.
Wilson was named America’s Greatest Singer by Time magazine in 2001.
Cassandra Wilson was renowned for her genre-bending voice, expanding the boundaries of traditional jazz with blues roots and effortlessly adapting to folk, pop, R&B, country, and other styles.
At the heart of her entire body of work was her unique contralto voice, a soulful sound unmistakably connected to her roots.
Born and raised in Jackson, the daughter of musician Herman B. Fowlkes and teacher Mary Fowlkes, Wilson showed a great passion for music from a young age, listening to Motown, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk. At age six, she began taking piano lessons. She played clarinet in brass bands. She performed in cafes and cover bands while studying at Millsaps College and Jackson State University.
In the early 1980s, she studied with jazz greats in New Orleans before moving to New York and joining Steve Coleman’s M-Base Collective, where she eventually became its lead vocalist.
Her unmistakable voice earned her four Grammy nominations and two wins for Best Jazz Vocal Album. These were in 1997 for “New Moon Daughter” and in 2009 for “Loverly.”
In 2015, Wilson gave a special concert at the renowned Apollo Theater to commemorate the centennial of the birth of blues singer Billie Holiday, the legendary American jazz vocalist who died in New York at the age of 44. That same year, Wilson released her final album, “Coming Forth by Day,” a tribute to Holiday.
In 2022, Wilson was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the highest honors bestowed upon jazz musicians in the United States. Billboard.
