Cassandra Wilson
by Jimmy Katz
2
Cassandra Wilson
by Jimmy Katz
3
Cassandra Wilson
by Jimmy Katz
by Geoffrey Himes
May 2002
JazzTimes
When Cassandra Wilson played New York City’s Blue Note in February, a lot was riding on her week of shows. She was introducing a new album, Belly of the Sun (Blue Note), her first in three years, and a new band, her first in nine years without music director Lonnie Plaxico. And she was pushing her unorthodox approach even further, a style that had won an enthusiastic audience but had divided jazz critics between those who hailed her as a leading innovator and those who dismissed her as a crossover compromiser.
Wilson looked fabulous as she took the stage opening night. She wore a rumpled blue shirt over a black-velvet blouse and black high-heel boots; her almond-frosted dreadlocks were bundled in the back and spilled down her neck. She peered at the audience from under her heavy-lidded eyes and cracked one of her signature half-smiles as if she had just heard a juicy bit of gossip about each and every one of us.
There were no keyboards, horns or trap drums on stage; two hand drummers, two guitarists and a bassist flanked Wilson. The band stirred up a groove that didn’t snap, crackle and pop with big accents like your usual jazz combo; instead the rhythms rippled in overlapping patterns of small accents as if the music were coming from Brazil, Haiti or Louisiana rather than New York, Chicago or L.A.
When Wilson started singing, she didn’t lock into those undulating beats; rather she held out her smoky contralto in long, drawn-out syllables that created a dramatic tension against the jittery pulse. The words she sang, “I pulled into Nazareth/I was feeling about half-past dead,” were instantly familiar but not from any jazz book.
These are the opening lines from the folk-rock classic “The Weight,” introduced by the Band and remade so memorably by Aretha Franklin. But no one had ever sung it like this—with a Brazilian-Caribbean beat and a slow-blues vocal as thick as Mississippi mud.
Right there, in the opening moments of the show, was all the evidence one needed to argue for Wilson as a major jazz innovator. She has completely revamped jazz singing—the book, the beat, the very sound of the voice.
When Wilson first emerged in the late ’80s, jazz vocals had been stuck in a time warp. The template of repertoire, rhythm and delivery defined by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan in the ’40s had remained near constant while everything else in jazz was changing around it. Even Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln, two of Wilson’s biggest heroes, refined that template without fundamentally altering it.
Wilson has changed it all, and she’s continuing to shake things up with her new CD. Belly of the Sun begins with “The Weight” and proceeds to feature tunes by Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bob Dylan and Wilson herself. It prominently features such unlikely jazz instruments as mandolin, banjo, bouzouki and resonator guitar; no horn is heard until the 12th track. And the tension between the purring, moaning vocals and the rippling hand drums is sharper than ever.
“I don’t think you have to have a piano trio for it to be jazz,” Wilson insists. “We’ve heard that ride cymbal doing that 4/4 thing so much that we’ve come to believe that that is jazz. I don’t believe it. Jazz is not a certain repertoire or instrumentation; it’s about being truly in the moment and being able to improvise, being able to swing and drawing on the blues. We do all those things.”
It’s 11:30 a.m.—early morning by the jazz clock—the day before her Blue Note opening, and Wilson is seated in the corner booth of Dylan Prime, a restaurant that’s just a short stroll from her Tribeca apartment. Wearing a black turtleneck and dangling orange-bead earrings, she leans over a steaming mug of tea and ponders each question with the same patience she brings to her singing. When she grabs hold of an idea, she draws it out the way she does a note.
“Some people want to lock jazz up in an ivory tower where there’s no place to breathe or grow,” she complains. “If the music has to be a certain way, if you have to do Cole Porter and Irving Berlin tunes, you’re just recycling the same music over and over again.
“When people say, ‘The new pop songs aren’t as good as the old pop songs,’ I say, ‘Listen again.’ It’s just ridiculous to think that good songwriting ended in the ’50s. We’re in 2002, and you’re telling me no one has written a good melody and good lyrics in 50 years? It’s so liberating to look outside the traditional jazz book for material.”
No singer has been more aggressive or consistent in expanding the jazz book than Wilson. When she moved to New Jersey in 1982, she started gigging as a jazz singer in nearby Manhattan. One night she sang “Cherokee” at a jazz-club tribute to Charlie Parker, and afterward the alto saxophonist Steve Coleman came over and struck up a conversation.
“He told me bebop is important,” Wilson recounts, “but he said it was even more important that I create my own music and my own style. He said I’d never be noticed if I kept doing that same repertoire and that same style from another era; so many singers were doing those same Tin Pan Alley tunes.”
It was a life-changing conversation, and Wilson began to hang out with Coleman and friends like Greg Osby, Geri Allen, Lonnie Plaxico and Jean-Paul Bourelly, who made up Brooklyn’s M-Base movement. Unlike so many singers who combined jazz and R&B by simplifying everything, Wilson combined the two genres by complicating everything—keeping the funky beats and the altered chords, the gospel wail and the improvised scatting. And she started to write original material, either by herself or with Coleman, Bourelly and her band.
“I had never heard of a female jazz vocalist other than Abbey Lincoln writing her own material,” Wilson says. “The more songwriting I did, the more I loved it. You’re able to create a vehicle specifically for your own voice, specifically for your own experiences. Not that you can’t express your experiences through other people’s material, but with your own songs less tailoring is required.”
Wilson recorded six M-Base-dominated albums for JMT Records and a one-off project for DIW/Columbia, but in 1993 she signed with Blue Note and decided it was time for a major overhaul of her music. She hired a new band and found a new producer, Craig Street, who helped her find her way back home to the music of her youth.
“Craig did this Freudian thing,” she recalls, “and had me lie on a couch as he asked me questions about how I felt about the music I had grown up with. I told him about playing Joni Mitchell songs on guitar while I was in college in Mississippi and said, ‘But how am I going to be a jazz vocalist and do the folk thing?’ He said, ‘Why not? It’s who you are.’ So I decided to come out of the closet.”
On the two albums that Street produced, 1993’s Blue Light ’Til Dawn and 1995’s New Moon Daughter, Wilson tackled songs by Mitchell, Van Morrison, U2, Hank Williams, Neil Young, the Monkees, the Stylistics, Ann Peebles, Robert Johnson and Son House, and she made them all sound comfortable in a jazz setting.
On her frequent guest appearances during the ’90s, Wilson sang Muddy Waters with Javon Jackson, the Zombies with Kurt Elling, the Temptations with Regina Carter, Elvis Costello with Bill Frisell, Prince and the Beatles with Bob Belden, Aretha Franklin with David Sanborn, Afro-pop with Angélique Kidjo and hip-hop with the Roots.
“I think these songs stand up musically,” Wilson argues. “Joni Mitchell writes great melodies and great chord changes. She writes very freely, maybe because she’s unschooled, and the things she does with guitar tunings have always fascinated me. And the language that she and Bob Dylan use is so powerful. Their lyrics are connected to folk, the common folk, whereas Cole Porter and Harold Arlen are more connected to the wealthy, the bon vivant. Dylan, Mitchell and Robbie Robertson [of the Band] are writing for the disaffected, discontented and disenfranchised; they’re saying, ‘Hey, it’s not perfect down here; we have some demons to deal with.’
“And the blues—it used to be that jazz artists prided themselves on knowing the blues. But how many young jazz musicians are willing to transcribe Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson the way they transcribe Bird or Trane? You can’t tell me that this music is too common or too easy. Those songs are bottomless.
“And don’t talk to me about sophisticated harmonies; you can always change the chords. That’s what I do—I’m a jazz musician; I live for chord substitutions. If Ella Fitzgerald could turn a nursery rhyme like “A Tisket a Tasket” into a jazz song, what can’t we use?
“Have you ever heard the original version of ‘Green Dolphin Street’? It’s your standard movie theme song, but someone said, ‘I can change these chords and make it interesting.’ That’s what John Coltrane did with ‘My Favorite Things.’ He said, ‘I like this melody, but I’ll put a minor feel in there and an Indian raga, then I’ll hold that pedal point forever.’”
Along with Wilson’s new repertoire came a new way of singing. Notes were no longer flung like dishes; they were kneaded and stretched as if they were still wet clay. Instead of singing like a piano, she sang more like an organ, trading in the usual percussive attack for a more sustained, rounded approach to each note.
On Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move” from Belly of the Sun, for example, she pulls and twists at the line endings. “You may be high,” she sings, and the “high” slides up and over an extra beat. “You may be low,” she adds, and the “low” tumbles off a cliff. “You may be down,” she sympathizes, “no place to go,” and the “go” is held until a hint of despair creeps in. “But when the Lord”—the single syllable of “Lord” marches in on two notes like a monarch—“gets ready”—“ready” falls down like a judge’s gavel—“you gotta move”—and the “move” trails off like a train disappearing down the track.
There were two main sources for Wilson’s new vocal style. One was in the Mississippi Delta, where singers like Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy Waters had blurred the boundaries between singing, the moaning of despair and the moaning of orgasm. The other was postwar New York, where Billie Holiday and Miles Davis gave birth to a cool alternative to hot bebop.
“What I’m doing is more a Billie way of singing,” Wilson explains. “Billie was so different from Ella and Sarah. It was not based on dexterity so much as on the roundness of her tone, the color inside the voice. And how much of her life is in that? When you concentrate on singing really fast or imitating horns, the tone becomes less important. But when you take time to sing the song; you have to leave spaces in it.
“Those spaces invite an audience into the sound you’re creating. Being a Southerner, I’m probably predisposed to that slower, thicker sort of sound; that ‘built for comfort not for speed’ kind of thing. I’m taking what Billie did and using it to create longer lines where I can sail on what the rhythm section is doing. I want the option of locking in with them on certain passages and floating above them on others; that way I can create tension and release it.
“And, of course, when I went back to the blues in Mississippi, that changed how I sing. I think a lot of jazz musicians are afraid of the blues, because there’s a certain emotional vulnerability when you get into this material. It’s so bare that you really have to be inventive; you can’t rely on the usual jazz vocabulary of quoting melodies and running scales and going, ‘scooby-dooby-doo.’ That’s why a lot of jazz musicians feel safer keeping an academic distance from the blues.
“I’ve done a lot of jerky singing in the past,” she adds, “but now I’m hearing something different. It has something to do with the fact that I’ve been listening to Miles Davis so much over the past few years. I feel the need to stretch things out more and savor a note, especially if it’s a good note that’s really singing with the other instruments. It’s not always the same note every night, but when I hear a note really ringing, I hold on to it and let it enjoy a long decay.”
The longer Wilson held out those notes and savored their lingering overtones, the more she found herself fighting against musicians who wanted to cover up every vacant space. She had a special problem with drummers, whose splashy cymbals ate up a lot of sonic territory. She didn’t know what to do until producer Craig Street came to the rescue.
“Craig taught me something very important about drums,” she acknowledges. “I’d always assumed that you had to work with a regular drum kit. But on Blue Light ’Til Dawn and New Moon Daughter, I realized that I could hear more of the overtones and undertones of my voice if I didn’t have the kit. What was getting in the way was not the drumheads but the cymbals. It’s easier for a horn player to work with cymbals, because a horn has a narrower aural focus and can cut through. But the human voice is multitimbral, and all those other tones get lost in a wash of cymbals—especially my voice, which is a contralto and in the same range. Even the snare and the hi-hat get in the way. And these young drummers are trying so hard to sound like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones that they don’t know how to use brushes or mallets, how to work with a singer. There’s something about the way they’re constantly pushing the tempo with the ride cymbal that gets on my nerves.
“When I got rid of the kit and started using hand drums, it led to different patterns. The conga player states the main rhythmic pulse, but the percussionist doesn’t play the same thing; he plays something complementary. So you have that push and pull without all that cymbal noise. When we’re working out arrangements, if I hear something I can’t float over, we rework it so there’s enough space for my voice. And these different drum patterns led us to Brazilian music.”
The new album features Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters of March” and James Taylor’s “Only a Dream in Rio,” and it was scheduled to include Caetano Veloso’s “Little Lion” until the song was pulled from the disc at the last minute. With two hand drummers and two guitarists, Wilson’s band is well designed for this repertoire and she skips through it with a lilting finesse. She sang all three songs at the Blue Note, and when she delivered Jobim’s line about “the joy in your heart,” she leaned out over the stage edge as if to press the point home.
“I’ve always loved Brazilian music,” she says. “There’s a natural connection between bossa nova and jazz—they both come from Afro-European cultures; they both emphasize rhythm and rely on improvisation.”
But the exotic land that had the biggest influence on Belly in the Sun was her native Mississippi. Wilson was born there in Jackson 46 years ago, the daughter of Herman Fowlkes, a postman, and Mary Fowlkes, a teacher. They lived in the city, but their next-door neighbor had chickens in the yard, and Wilson’s grandmother went into the woods behind their house every day to gather herbs for cooking and healing.
“I only came inside to sleep, eat and change my clothes,” the former tomboy remembers. “There was a closeness to nature that we as African-Americans have lost. We have become dangerously urbanized. This environment is not healthy for anybody, but especially for us, because we can’t escape as easily as a lot of white people who can jump in the car and go visit grandma. Our children are surrounded by concrete, when nature should be the first instructor for the young.”
Wilson was a maverick even as a teenager. Instead of going to predominantly black Jackson State College, she went to the city’s predominantly white Millsaps College “to investigate white people and study their habits, almost like a National Geographic expedition.” She studied Camus and Hegel in the classroom and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan back in the dorm.
She dropped out of Millsaps in 1975, moved to Little Rock to front a blues-rock band, returned to Jackson in 1978, enrolled in Jackson State and graduated in 1980. During her second fling at college, she formed a folk band called Past, Present & Future. Drawing inspiration from Mitchell, Dylan, Nina Simone and Richie Havens, the quartet featured Wilson on acoustic guitar and vocals, Rhonda Richmond on violin and keyboards, Niecie Evers (Medgar’s niece) on congas, and Nellie McInnis on bass. Even today she thinks of Jackson as “home.”
“By the end of 1999,” Wilson says, “I was exhausted. I had done four albums since 1993, each followed by a long tour and one led right into the next. So I needed to take some time off, and I went home to get my bearings. I always go home when I want to gather the information I need to move forward. It’s such a different pace from here in New York; you have time for long conversations over big meals. The lifestyle is so gracious that it gives you time to reflect.
“The other thing I like about Mississippi is that I’m nobody down there. We always joke that Michael Jackson could walk down the street in Jackson and people would go, ‘Oh, that’s Michael Jackson,’ and keep on walking. People there are not easily impressed. So when people spend time with you, you know it’s because of you and not because of what you do.”
As the Christmas holidays of 1999 spilled over into 2000, Wilson reconnected with the members of her college folk band. The returning prodigal daughter was so impressed with the songs Richmond was writing and singing that Wilson decided to help her former bandmate make a record.
Wilson set up shop at a Jackson studio as Richmond recorded six of her own compositions plus songs by Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and Muddy Waters. Not only did Wilson produce and sing harmony on the album, Oshogbo Town, but she also formed Ojah Records to put it out last year.
“I don’t own any of my own masters,” Wilson laments, “and ownership is so important in this business. So I wanted to start a company where I could own something. By keeping the overhead low, I can make a profit without having to sell a lot of copies. I like the idea of keeping it small.
“I haven’t signed anyone else yet, but I’m looking at some people. I want to document some of the great musicians in Mississippi who choose never to leave. I know it contradicts the stereotype, but life is so seductive down there that if people can play music and support themselves, they never want to leave.”
After recording Richmond early in 2000 and making the rounds of the jazz-festival circuit that summer, Wilson overhauled her band in the fall. Lonnie Plaxico, her bassist and musical director since 1993, was ready to be a bandleader in his own right. When he left, he took pianist George Colligan and drummer Lionel Cordew with him.
Wilson held on to guitarist Marvin Sewell and percussionist Jeffrey Haynes and decided to return to her twin-guitar, twin-percussion lineup of the mid-’90s. So she brought guitarist Kevin Breit, percussionist Cyro Baptista and bassist Mark Peterson—all of whom had worked on New Moon Daughter—back into the band, not only for the recording sessions but also for the live shows.
“A lot of times the label wants you to use famous names in the studio,” she says, “and then save money on the road by hiring younger, unknown guys. But it breaks up the continuity if you don’t use your studio band on the road. It’s more work because you have to teach the new people the songs, and then it doesn’t sound the same anyway. I’m fortunate because I don’t get that kind of pressure from Blue Note.”
As she considered how to best use this new band, Wilson remembered how much she had enjoyed working in Mississippi on Richmond’s album. But for Belly of the Sun she wanted to get out of Jackson and up into the heart of the Delta. There are no state-of-the-art studios in that northwest corner of the state, so she decided to record in the old Clarksdale train depot, the same spot where so many sharecroppers bought a one-way ticket for Chicago in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Her engineer, Danny Kopelson, set up a mobile recording truck outside, and Wilson went to work.
“I wanted to get my musicians out of New York,” she explains. “I wanted to take them down to Mississippi and show them the ‘crossroads.’ These are such great musicians that I knew they could play anywhere; the important thing was that they absorb the emotion of where I come from, that they put the rhythm of Clarksdale into their music. I don’t think the record would have sounded the same if we hadn’t gone down there.”
While she was down there, Wilson discovered Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, a member of the Charles Brown/Champion Jack Dupree schools of mid-century jazz-blues piano. Ames, who died earlier this year at 81, joins Wilson for an unaccompanied voice-and-piano version of “Darkness on the Delta.” If it sounds like two utterly relaxed people sitting side-by-side on the piano bench, just fooling around, that’s because it is.
More local talent got involved when Wilson recorded one of Richmond’s songs, “Road So Clear”; the composer played piano and Mississippian Olu Dara played trumpet, the only trace of a horn on the whole disc. And when the band got kicked out of the depot to accommodate a previously scheduled wedding reception, Wilson dragged everyone into a nearby boxcar for echo-heavy treatments of “You Gotta Move” and Robert Johnson’s “Hot Tamales.”
Last fall, Wilson found herself back in New York in her new neighborhood of Tribeca. After years of living in Harlem, she had moved downtown to experience a different slice of New York culture—and to enjoy better take-out delivery, she adds. On the morning of Sept. 11, however, her manager Michael Simanga called her and told her to look outside her window.
“I looked out,” she recalls, “and there were all these businessmen walking and running, which is something you never see on my street. So I turned on the TV and saw what they were running from—the World Trade Center, only eight blocks away. It was like being in a really bad movie; it was terrifying and exciting at the same time. The whole city had been brought to its knees.
“As Americans, we always feel that we’re secure, that someone was taking care of the bad guys before they got to us. That day we all felt absolutely vulnerable. And out of that vulnerability came some amazing displays of humanity. Something strange kicked in for me, and I decided not to move. I felt a protectiveness for my new ’hood. This was my home now, and I didn’t want to run away from home.”
Out of those experiences came a new song, “Just Another Parade.” “Yesterday’s news,” Wilson wrote over a skipping acoustic-guitar melody, “is tomorrow’s blues, but today I am alive/Today I did much more than survive.” As soon as she wrote it, she knew it was the song she had been seeking for her scheduled duet with new folk-soul star India.Arie. They quickly cut it in New York and added it to Belly of the Sun.
Arie is just one of the young female singers, along with Jill Scott, Norah Jones, Patricia Barber and others, who seem to be taking their cue from Wilson’s unorthodox approach to repertoire, songwriting, arrangement and delivery. These fellow travelers suggest that Wilson is not merely blazing a divergent path for herself but may be launching a whole new subgenre.
“Today you have a lot of strong, self-reliant women in the music,” Wilson argues, “and you can’t expect them to keep singing the songbook of the ’30s and ’40s. Those lyrics may have been appropriate for their time, but I was always taught that jazz was all about being in the moment. It has always been important to me to be relevant to my own time, to express my own feelings.
“When you canonize a certain group of songs and a certain way of singing, you don’t give the singer enough room to change. And if a musician can’t experiment and improvise, how can this be jazz? Someone has to push the boundaries of the music forward. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
Originally published in May 2002
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ttp://jazztimes.com/articles/138274-cassandra-wilson-dawn-of-light
JazzTimes
Cassandra Wilson: Dawn of Light
On the 20th anniversary of "Blue Light 'Til Dawn"
by Dan Ouellette
10/13/14
JazzTimes
Released in the fall of 1993, Cassandra Wilson’s recently reissued Blue Note debut, Blue Light ’Til Dawn, made her a jazz superstar and marked a paradigm shift in vocal-jazz repertory. Essential to its success was Blue Note’s then-president Bruce Lundvall, whose reputation for generosity and facilitating creativity seemed to flout every known negative stereotype about record executives. In this excerpt from his new Lundvall biography,Playing by Ear (ArtistShare), Dan Ouellette details Wilson’s historic ascent at Blue Note.
One afternoon in the fall of 2012, Bruce Lundvall heads up to the SiriusXM satellite jazz radio studio at Columbus Circle, housed next door to the Jazz at Lincoln Center performing venues, to host his weekly Blue Note Records hour with Sirius Real Jazz program director Mark Ruffin.
As he has done for dozens of these radio sessions, Lundvall tells stories and Ruffin cues up tracks. It’s an essential Blue Note primer. Today, new Blue Note president Don Was and senior vice president/general manager Hank Forsyth are sitting in with the chairman emeritus as he talks the talk about a few of the myriad signings he’s been responsible for in the last two decades.
Part of today’s focus is on Cassandra Wilson. Mark plays her rendering of “Time After Time” (the Cyndi Lauper hit pop song that was a concert staple of Miles Davis’ in the last decade of his life) from Wilson’s 1999 Blue Note album, Traveling Miles—her tribute to the music of Miles.
Lundvall is thrilled to hear that unmistakable dark-roasted contralto voice and her impeccable lyrical sensibility with her singular drawn-out syllables and bending pitches.
While Lundvall signed many important jazz musicians during the ’90s, one of the most extraordinary artists he brought to Blue Note was Wilson. She had already recorded seven albums for Polydor’s Munich-based JMT label (including 1988’s luscious Blue Skies, a collection of straight-up jazz standards) as well as an electric album for DIW/Columbia in 1993, Dance to the Drums Again. But she was not feeling entirely fulfilled as an artist.
Wilson began her jazz singing odyssey in the mid-’80s working with saxophonist Steve Coleman’s adventurous M-Base Collective (she was one of the founding members) and launching her solo career by recording two albums of funky, electric music, 1986’s Point of View and 1987’s Days Aweigh. “I learned how to mine different kinds of repertoire and to peel apart the structures within songs to understand them,” she told me a decade ago about her M-Base days. “But the whole thrust of that movement was to incorporate the music of our day, to make it personal.”
Although she continued to record her own solo albums, Wilson also performed and recorded with Coleman and fellow M-Baser Greg Osby, while taking to the road with Henry Threadgill.
Influenced by both Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, Wilson set off to develop her voice. Even though she didn’t want to imitate Carter, she admits that she was following in her footsteps a little too closely. Carter, interviewed by DownBeat, was asked about the up-and-comer. “Betty said she’s all right,” Wilson says, “but she’s got to find her voice. And she was absolutely right.”
At a live DownBeat Blindfold Test at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 2008, Wilson commented on the song “In the Still of the Night” that Carter recorded on her 1992 album, It’s Not About the Melody: “You don’t hear singers today doing what she’s doing rhythmically. She’s focused squarely on delivering some of the most amazing, swinging shapes and forms that a vocalist to date has done. And her pitch is what I describe as a moveable pitch. She’s not trying to hit the center of a note, and sometimes she just slides right into it or goes around it.”
Wilson said that it wasn’t only the music but the pioneering way she led her own band: “She was in the trenches with the musicians. Most of the time you see a singer in front of a trio or quartet and not enjoying being with the musicians supporting her. But Betty was one of the first singers I saw who was a musician onstage. She was having conversations with everyone in the group. That turned me on to jazz.”
But Wilson knew she needed to move beyond the Betty zone. Coleman gave her similar sage advice, agreeing that finding her voice was Wilson’s Holy Grail. “I studied bebop seriously to where I was transcribing Charlie Parker solos and digging deep into the history and the lore,” she says. “So I thought it natural to follow Betty—Betty ‘Bebop’ Carter—but Steve convinced me that that wasn’t an option. He said that all the singers were doing the same thing, singing the standards, and that I’d never be able to sing them the way they did. So, find your own voice.”
Freed from that looming presence, Wilson found that she also began to “grow tired of all the music around me. So much was happening in terms of instrumentation, and at that point in my career, I wanted to hear my voice with less instrumentation.”
Originally published in September 2014
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/05/397321378/cassandra-wilson-couldnt-wait-to-reinvent-the-billie-holiday-songbook
Music Interviews
Cassandra Wilson 'Couldn't Wait' To Reinvent The Billie Holiday Songbook
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April 5, 2015
Heard on All Things Considered
Cassandra Wilson's Billie Holiday tribute album is titled Coming Forth By Day.Mark Seliger/Courtesy of the artist
Vocalist Billie Holiday was born 100 years ago this week. Today, her place in music history is clear.
"I think we witness in Billie Holiday's music the beginning of the jazz vocal age, really," fellow vocalist Cassandra Wilson says. "Her phrasing is very conversational, and it swings — it moves with the musicians. She's very much in charge of her place in the music. She's in control of the story, and in control of her cadence."
Jazz Night In America
April 8: Watch Cassandra Wilson Sing Billie Holiday
Wilson — one of the premier jazz singers of her own age — is about to release a tribute album to Holiday, titled Coming Forth By Day. But as she says in an interview with NPR's Arun Rath, she aspired to much more than re-creating the original iconic recordings.
"I couldn't wait to get inside of this material and spruce it up, reinvent it, do some wild and crazy things to it," Wilson says. "I'm in that line of singers that really mine the emotional content of a song. You steer clear of the cliches and go straight for the heart of the song.
"It's beyond improper — it's considered rude, in jazz, to imitate someone. So for me to do a tribute to Billie Holiday and imitate her style or her context would be almost insulting."
For example, Wilson's take on "Don't Explain," a song Holiday wrote about a cheating lover, comes from an empowered perspective.
"It's a different version, because it takes more of a womanist reading," Wilson says. "The reading is not so much, 'I'm the victim,' or 'You cheated on me.' It's more of a sense of, 'You may be doing something, but it needs to stop right now.'"
Take Five: A Jazz Sampler
Evolution Of A Song: 'Strange Fruit'
Wilson also takes on "Strange Fruit," a protest against racism — specifically, the lynching of African-Americans. Her version takes on renewed purpose in light of the recent high-profile police killings of unarmed black men, and the Black Lives Matter movement which rose in their wake.
"When I sing this song, it sounds more like there's a chorus, in terms of the musicians who join me," Wilson says. "And it is more emphatic, because it's ridiculous that we would still be dealing with these issues in 2015."
Wilson did contribute one original song, which she calls "Last Song (For Lester)." Holiday and tenor saxophonist Lester Young were the closest of collaborators — "musical soulmates," Wilson says — who had a falling out. When Holiday first learned of Young's death, Holiday immediately flew back to the U.S. from London to be at the funeral, where she expected to be able to sing for her dear friend. When she was barred from performing, she was devastated. "I'll be the next to go," she predicted — and indeed, Holiday died four months later.
Wilson's song imagines a message from Holiday to Young. As she sings:
You are my morning star
Forever rising, forever breaking my heart
But I'd do it — I'd do it all again
If they would let me sing the last song for you
The Telegraph
Cassandra Wilson: Jazz diva, priestess – and descendant of Henry VIII
Cassandra Wilson tells Peter Culshaw about avoiding musical perfection, her African heritage and a surprising discovery about one of the great blues standards.
by Peter Culshaw
10 November 2010
The woman who for many people – including me – is the pre-eminent jazz singer of our time, is telling me she thinks she is related to Henry VIII. Cassandra Wilson is worried that people might think she is “out of her mind” for making the claim, but a family member has done the research and even had DNA tests and is convinced they are very distant cousins.
She has spent time since her discovery researching the Tudors, and also thinks the New Orleans standard St James Infirmary – a version of which is on her new album, Silver Pony– refers to the old St James’s Hospital for lepers in London. “St James’s Palace is now on that site – built by Henry VIII. So a song everyone thought was a New Orleans traditional standard is based on an old English folk song.”
The other, more obvious part of the jazz singer’s heritage is an African one. Although brought up a Presbyterian in Jackson, Mississippi she has become a Yoruba priestess, following the spiritual path of her West African forebears. “I’m a Priestess of Oshun, the deity of music and rivers.”
There is certainly a depth to Cassandra Wilson’s music and her rich, emotive contralto voice suggests some powerful roots are being drawn on. Now 55, she is at the peak of her powers, winning her second Grammy award last year. Her jazz DNA stands in lineage from Billie Holiday to her mentor Abbey Lincoln and runs counter to the Peggy Lee pop-jazz line being mined by the likes of Norah Jones and Diane Krall. Not that she is snobbish (unlike many jazz buffs) about the likes of Jones, who is on the same Blue Note label. “What she does is amazing and wonderful – and a great thing for the label. But I wouldn’t want to change places with her. I much prefer to be under the radar: it gives you more freedom. ”
Wilson’s version of being “under the radar” is still fairly high-profile. Her breakthrough album of 1995, New Moon Daughter, sold 250,000 copies and won her her first Grammy. What has defined her work throughout her 30-year career has been a mission to bring other kinds of music – pop, rock, soul, blues and gospel into the hermetically sealed world of jazz. Her 1990s albums were notable for the rich variety of covers from Hank Williams to Joni Mitchell and even a jazz reworking of the Monkees hit Last Train to Clarksville. “I was brought up on both the Beatles and Miles Davis – it feels natural to do a big range of tunes.”
Her new album includes a Lennon-McCartney evergreen, Blackbird, and a Stevie Wonder tune, If It’s Magic, as well as a version of the Charlie Patton blues classic Pony Blues. “Not many people have covered him. People know a little of Robert Johnson, and they look at him as being the father of the Delta Blues, but Charlie was the real pioneer.”
Half of Silver Pony was recorded live on her tour of Europe last year, the other half at Piety Studios in New Orleans, a city she lived in at the outset of her career in the mid-Seventies. “I remember everywhere you looked, you would hear music. The French Quarter was so vibrant.”
A particular favourite joint was the great pianist Professor Longhair’s infamous club, Tipitina’s. “I’ve never witnessed anything like that scene. It was so juicy and rich – New Orleans at its best.” After Hurricane Katrina, though, she says wistfully, the city isn’t the same, “A lot of those street musicians haven’t come back because there is simply nowhere for them to come back to.”
Silver Pony is an album filled with nostalgia. The cover photo comes from a formative childhood experience for Wilson. “A man came around my neighbourhood in Jackson with a pony and camera, and you could pay to get your picture taken.” Her brothers declined, but the young Wilson longed to have a go and her mother hesitated before relenting. “I’m happy that she let me ride the pony. I was fearless, and I guess she wanted to encourage that.”
She spent a lot of time looking after her mother, who had Alzheimer’s and who died last year. The album is a kind of memorial to her spirit.
Wilson also lost her mentor and friend, the jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, who died last August. “You get a lot from an artist like that just being in the same room, listening to her and watching her. I learnt a great deal: how to approach music and how to really inhabit a song. I saw her four days before she passed away. Even then I felt she was teaching me.”
Wilson has continually tried to plug into history. In the Eighties, she lived in the same apartment block in Harlem that had once been home to such luminaries as Count Basie and Lena Horne. “The apartments had a really powerful vibe,” she says. The vibe, in both her home and studio life, is “the most important thing”.
Although she has recorded with Wynton Marsalis as lead singer on his Blood on the FieldsOratorio, she has no time for his purist approach or belief that jazz is “America’s classical music”. “I love European classical music, but his approach is using someone else’s values to gauge who you are.”
When I comment that the guitar part on her version of St. James' Infirmary is way out of tune, she says: “It’s richly out of tune, beautifully out of tune. That’s the music I pray for. If it’s too in tune, it can get stale. We end up being where we’ve been before.” The important thing is “not to be a copyist. That’s the really big challenge with each album. Even if you are copying yourself, it’s not really jazz.”
'Silver Pony’ is released on Blue Note Live on November 22.
The Root Interview: Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson chats with The Root as she preps for the release of her new album and an upcoming tour with Prince.
by Martin Johnson
Posted: November 4, 2010
With her 1993 recording Blue Light ‘Til Dawn, Cassandra Wilson changed the course of jazz. Until then, most jazz was either traditional, experimental or a fusion of jazz and pop. Wilson showed that it could be all three by blending jazz and Delta blues and applying her sound to a repertoire that ranged from blues and jazz standards to classic rock. The recording was a landmark commercial and artistic success. Since then, a lot of boundaries have fallen, and musicians feel more comfortable playing what’s in their hearts and heads rather than taking sides in an academic argument.
Never one to rest on her laurels, Wilson has continued to develop and broaden her sound with each new disc. Her latest, Silver Pony (Blue Note Records), will be released on Nov. 9. She took a minute or two to field some questions from The Root about the recording, her work with John Legend and her upcoming tour with Prince.
The Root: Your last recording, Loverly (2008), was a collection of jazz standards. How did you transition from that disc to Silver Pony, and why are some of the songs recorded live?
Cassandra Wilson: A few of these songs were in our repertoire with the group that performed on that recording, but as the new group came together, we began to pick and choose new songs. We just played them in the studio and some worked; some will never see the light of day. (Laughs.) We were really having a good time performing them, so we decided to put some of the songs in front of an audience, just to see what would happen.
TR: How did your collaboration with John Legend on the song “Watch the Sunrise” come about?
CW: Happenstance. Some of our friends overlap, and John conveyed a message that he had a song for me. He was a big fan of New Moon Daughter [Wilson’s 1995 opus]. I was shocked and flattered, but when I met him, he was really humble.
TR: You’re on Prince’s “Welcome 2 America” Tour. How did that happen?
CW: He came to see me a few years ago when I played the Jazz Cafe in London and was kind enough to chat after the show. He’s a beautiful spirit, full of charm and grace. As for being invited to join Prince on the “Welcome 2 America” Tour, I’m tickled purple!
TR: You’re from Mississippi. Isn’t some of that the music you heard growing up? I would imagine you heard a lot of blues, both urban and rural.
CW: A little, but not really. It wasn’t something that we listened to a lot at home. We listened to what was considered more cultivated music. It wasn’t until later when I was able to investigate my roots that I heard a lot of blues.
TR: So the same schism that permeates our community now between urban and rural — I mean, why is “country” an epithet? — was present even down South when you were growing up? Those biases are sturdy.
CW: Yes, definitely. I got a lot of that when I did Blue Light ‘Til Dawn. There was a great resistance. People said I was turning away from something more sophisticated for something less.
TR: I liked your post on Super Bowl Sunday about the New Orleans Saints and what their win meant for their fans and the city. Are you still living in New Orleans?
CW: I live everywhere, or at least it feels that way. We have the place in New Orleans, Jackson [Miss.], Woodstock [N.Y.], and we just got the apartment back in New York City. I haven’t spent more than two weeks in one place in a long time. It’s hard to find your center when you live like that; you have to have a different anchor. But I feel a connection to each place.
TR: Do you spend much time on the Internet?
CW: I use as many social networking vehicles as possible to connect with people. It’s important, though sometimes you have to tell people to step off. I had to do that with someone when the discussion of the Park51 project turned heated. It’s good to do sometimes, clear your space.
TR: What are you listening to these days?
CW: Abbey [Lincoln], some Billie [Holiday], too. There are some singers that I’m constantly learning from. I’m always finding new elements that draw me to their music. Right now it seems that I’m listening to their phrasing a lot. When they sing, certain words pop out of a song in a unique way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Martin Johnson is a regular contributor to The Root.
Seattle Times
May 29, 2010
Time after time, jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson continues to surprise
Jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson brings her diverse repertoire to Seattle for a Jazz Alley gig June 3-6.
by Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic
Once you hear her deep-amber voice, honeyed and smokey, it is unmistakable. But the repertoire of jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson continually surprises.
The bewitching singer, at Jazz Alley in the coming days for her first Seattle gig in this decade, has one of the most diverse discographies of any top jazz chanteuse.
The Jackson, Miss., native recently released a retrospective of pop covers, “Closer to You,” featuring her arrestingly unique interpretations of songs by the likes of U2, Neil Young, Cyndi Lauper.
Over her 20-year-plus career, she’s also cast her sensuous spell on Broadway melodies, the instrumental tunes of trumpeter Miles Davis, Brazilian sambas, old-time Delta blues, self-penned experimental-jazz originals.
In a voice softer and higher than her deep-river singing timbre, Wilson chats by phone about being a song connoisseur, collector, historian and medium.
“I always say that I don’t choose the material, it chooses me,” she declares. “Because a song, especially if it’s got a good story and something I can connect with emotionally, will just stick around in my head and I won’t be able to get rid of it.”
One tune sticking lately? “Pony Blues.”
“I found it in a real weird, roundabout way,” she says. “I was involved in this project about Langston Hughes, and in his book of poems, ‘Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,’ he quoted a lyric that began, ‘Hello, Central.’
“It was from a song called ‘Hesitation Blues,’ and in a book I was reading about the Delta blues, I found out blues singer Charlie Patton wrote it, so I tracked it down. I like to research those kinds of patterns in the blues.”
Wilson also has Joni Mitchell stuck in her brain. On her gorgeous hit 1996 disc “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn,” with producer Craig Street, she carved out a rootsy, acoustic sound in a spooky-stunning version of Mitchell’s “Black Crow,” that propelled her music in a whole new direction.
But Wilson passes on songs, even by her favorite artists, when they don’t speak to her. “It’s really not so much about the style or the genre, because you can tear that up or build a new structure. It’s about the message.”
Billie Holiday is one of her big influences (with jazz divas Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln and Nancy Wilson). But she chose not to record “Deep Song,” a Holiday blues tune recommended to her.
“It has an exquisite harmonic architecture, but the lyric was too dark for me,” Wilson notes. “I said the same thing to Craig Street about the Bono song ‘Love is Blindness,’ but that one has a little tongue-in-cheek stuff in it, too. There was none of that in ‘Deep Song.’ It was pretty desperate.”
The divorced mother of a 21-year-old son, Wilson hasn’t made it to Seattle lately because she’s worked mainly on the East Coast and in Europe. She divides her off time between homes in upstate New York, Mississippi and New Orleans. “I love all three for different reasons. New Orleans has a lot going on, musically there’s a real flourishing down there.”
Wilson has finished a new disc, which she says she might just release via Facebook. And to her delight, pop star John Legend wrote a new tune for her.
“There are quite a few younger artists out there like John, who are learning their history, and making their way to an understanding of a broader traditional dynamic,” she says. “John has a really powerful, distinct voice. His material is wonderful, and I know it will continue to evolve.”
These days, for live gigs, Wilson works alternately with two combos. Each reflects a different side of her musical personality.
“One band is guitar-based, in the style of the [album] ‘New Moon Daughter’ material. The other band I’m bringing to Seattle. It’s from my jazz head, a group of five or six pieces with very expressive, powerful soloists.”
She muses, “I wish I could work with both bands at the same time, choosing back and forth from different material. That would be great.”
Yes indeed. And Wilson fans can dream, can’t we?
https://compulsivereader.com/2012/09/26/the-cosmopolitan-view-of-a-country-girl-another-country-by-cassandra-wilson-with-fabrizio-sotti/
Music reviews
The Cosmopolitan View of a Country Girl: Another Country
by Cassandra Wilson with Fabrizio Sotti
September 26, 2012
Compulsive Reader
by Daniel Garrett
Cassandra Wilson, Another Country
featuring Fabrizio Sotti
Produced by Wilson and Sotti
Entertainment One (E One), 2012
“It’s your responsibility as a jazz musician not to adulterate, but to augment, to extend, to amplify, to reconfigure, because that’s the whole foundation, that’s the whole basis of this music, jazz…It’s dynamic and life can enter into it.”
—Cassandra Wilson to Bomb magazine (Spring 1999)
Cassandra Wilson has explored a lot of experiences, a lot of music, and that is testament to her curiosity, imagination, and intellect; and her album Another Country, created in collaboration with Fabrizio Sotti, has an elegance that is thoughtful and timeless. Cassandra Wilson’s song “Red Guitar” is painterly, poetic, its instrumentation classical and bluesy, with drumming that is precise and lively, whereas “No More Blues,” a song of determination in which misery is shown the door, is itself a light blues tune with finger-snap rhythm, a slowed-down beat with jangling assets, mellow, verging on strange. (“Just like Frank, I’m gonna do it my way,” Wilson says, an aside acknowledging Sinatra.) “O Sole Mio,” mellow, a little melancholy, has a Latin flavor; and, the Italian-language composition, a popular Neapolitan tune sung by Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza, is here given a casually propulsive syncopation, and is pretty, possibly beautiful, followed by the meditative instrumental “Deep Blue.”
Hearing Cassandra Wilson’s Another Country, it is impossible not to think of some of her other work: Jumpworld (1990), She Who Weeps (1991), Blue Light ’Til Dawn (1993), New Moon Daughter (1996), and Traveling Miles (1999). I love the energy and expanse of vision in Jumpworld and Traveling Miles. Cassandra Wilson has been interesting for always sounding as if she is thinking, alive in and to the moment; and her taste has brought together different cultural forms. The daughter of a jazz guitarist father and schoolteacher mother, the Mississippi-born Cassandra Fowlkes (Wilson), who has lived in New Orleans and New York, grew up appreciating music rather than its labels. A student of the piano and the guitar, Cassandra learned European classical pieces as a girl, and is an admirer of folk and rock music as well as jazz and blues.
Cassandra Wilson’s early days were spent in thrall to Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Neil Young, Ellis Marsalis, Steve Coleman, and Betty Carter. Cassandra Wilson’s first solo recording was 1986’s Point of View, about which The New York Times’ critic Jon Pareles wrote, “The singer Cassandra Wilson aims for a new mixture of jazz and rock on Point of View—loose-limbed music that taps rhythmic drive and electronic timbres of rock but leaves plenty of room to improvise” (August 1, 1986); and that music was followed by 1987’s Days Aweigh, and in 1988 Blue Skies, a collection of standards that made a place for her on the cultural map. Wilson, whose music largely has been on Polygram’s JMT and Blue Note, returned to Mississippi to make 2002’s Belly of the Sun, which contained several blues songs and much of which was recorded in an old train depot. “I think a lot of jazz musicians are afraid of the blues, because there’s a certain emotional vulnerability when you get into this material,” Wilson told the Jazz Times writer Geoffrey Himes (May 2002). Yet, the blues were less a musical form or pleasure the singer had grown up with in Mississippi than a resource she sought after she became recognized as a sophisticate. Wilson has collaborated with Jean-Paul Bourelly, Regina Carter, Angelique Kidjo, John Legend, Jason Moran, and Wynton Marsalis. She still listens to Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln. Cassandra Wilson has been experimental and traditional—and now makes what can be called only Cassandra Wilson music.
On Another Country, from the recording company Entertainment One (E One), Cassandra Wilson’s musical associates are an international group, electric guitarist Fabrizio Sotti (Italy), percussionists Mino Cinelu (France) and Lekan Babalola (Nigeria), electric bassist Nicola Sorato (Italy), and accordionist Julien Labro (France). “It’s a reflective time in my life. I recently lost my mother. And when you lose your mother, it really brings you in touch with your mortality. And that stirred a lot of emotions and memories for me. And I’m becoming an elder, myself,” Cassandra Wilson told Ebony magazine’s internet site at the time of the album’s release. Then and there Wilson spoke of the roots of jazz in the deep American south, in field hollers, in the blues, and relished comparison to Zora Neale Hurston, and recalled the opportunity to discover more about Italian culture in Florence, Italy, while writing and recording music.
Cassandra Wilson’s voice is whispery through the quickly sung verses of Another Country’s “Almost Twelve,” suggesting anticipation, enthusiasm; and that song, written after getting lost in Florence, is Latin and bluesy at once. (“I cover a lot of ground and try to listen to as many different kinds of music as possible,” Wilson had told Bombmagazine’s Glenn O’Brien, for its Spring 1999 issue.) The music of Another Country’s “Passion,” which drew inspiration from viewing great Italian statuary, seems intricate, mystical, and its lyrics are given dramatic inflection. “When Will I See You Again” is ruminative too. The whole assemblage of songs has a classical quality. Has Cassandra Wilson strayed too far in the direction of thought rather than passion? In considering the Wilson collection Another Country, the magazine Downbeat’s critic Christopher Loudoun found the set “remarkably subdued” but declared that “Wilson’s slightly scorched, amber-hued voice remains inimitably stunning, but there is added depth, a heightened sense of raw honesty that mirrors the hushed splendor of Shirley Horn” (July 17, 2012).
“I saw another country in your eyes,” sings Cassandra Wilson in the song “Another Country,” which features sensuously moody bass playing and percussion. It is a reminder that, for many people, it is love more than anything else that delivers transcendence. “I’ve seen so many countries in your eyes,” Wilson amends. “Letting You Go” is an instrumental composition. In “Olomuroro,” a Yoruba folk tale (some claim it’s about nursemaid; others about a food-stealing monster), Wilson is helped by a children’s chorus, from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (“New Orleans has a very distinctive culture…There’s a very great deal of African retention there. When you go there, you get the sense that you’re in another country,” Wilson told Ebony)—and Wilson’s voice matches the delicacy of the children.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Daniel Garrett, a graduate of the New School for Social Research, and the principal organizer of the Cultural Politics Discussion Group at Poets House, is a writer whose work has appeared in The African, All About Jazz, American Book Review, Art & Antiques, The Audubon Activist, Black Film Review, Changing Men, Cinetext, Contact II, Film International, The Humanist, Hyphen, Illuminations, Muse Apprentice Guild, Option, Pop Matters, Quarterly Black Review of Books, Rain Taxi, Red River Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Wax Poetics, and World Literature Today. Daniel Garrett has written extensively about international film for Offscreen, and comprehensive commentary on music for The Compulsive Reader.
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/161085-cassandra-wilson-still-a-jazz-singer-as-she-roams-far-afield/
Cassandra Wilson
Still a "Jazz" Singer As She Roams Far Afield
by Will Layman
12 August 2012
PopMatters
Cassandra Wilson, the unconventional singer, changes it up with Another Country and talks about what it means to be a “jazz” musician finding a distinctive voice.
Photo: Marco Glaviano
There isn’t a more unique voice in American music than the one belonging to Cassandra Wilson. Her dusky contralto can move, within a phase from meditative to angry, romantic to jazzily precise, blues-drenched to delicate. No matter the mood that drenches her delivery, Wilson is immediately herself—perhaps the most distinctive and expressive singer of the last two decades.
Wilson’s new record, Another Country, is another exemplar of these two critical characteristics. From the start and throughout, Another Country is plainly Cassandra Wilson, yet it also represents a surprising variety and sense of change. Here is that distinctive voice, that one-of-a-kind sound, yet it is up to new and varied tricks.
Talking about the new recording, her first in almost 20 years away from Blue Note Records, Wilson agreed that she become more herself the more different directions she goes in. “Yes! I feel more confident because I’ve placed myself in so many different contexts. That fuels your belief in yourself. It helps you dig deep.”
For example, Wilson taking on an aria? Yes. Yet she still sounds utterly like Cassandra Wilson.
A Partnership, Again
In the past, Wilson has frequently teamed up with other strong voices to help push her harder into deeper territory. On Another Country she chose to work with jazz guitarist Fabrizio Sotti, recording in his neck of the woods—Florence, Italy.
Early in her career, Wilson worked with Henry Threadgill’s Ensemble New Air, a strong collaborator to say the least. Around the same time, she was working a recording extensively with musicians from Steve Coleman’s “M-BASE Collective,” where she was often somewhat hidden in an ensemble of strong personalities and surging electric grooves. “That,” Wilson notes, “was really, really difficult. It was a great experience but very challenging. I learned a lot. I had to keep up with them. I had to work and study. I had to challenge myself.”
Wilson started to sound like the artist we recognize today in 1993 with her first Blue Note disc, Blue Light Till Dawn. “That was the beginning of me finding a sound that suited my voice. And it helped me to develop a singular voice.” That disc was also a triumph of collaboration with producer Craig Street. “I lucked out when I signed with Bruce Lundvall on Blue Note. He was so knowledgeable and sensed that I was tapping into something. And he allowed me to do it. He wasn’t afraid and didn’t feel I had to follow a particular formula to sell records. He wanted me to express myself. He was really happy with the direction that Craig Street and I were going with the album. He gave me that support that an artist needs to pursue her own voice.”
And on and on. Just as Wilson was becoming clearly herself she signed on to record on a tour with Wynton Marsalis’s brilliant extended work Blood on the Fields, she challenged herself by recording a tribute record to the biggest personality in modern jazz in Traveling Miles, and as recently as 2008 she brought a major soloist in Jason Moran into her Loverly, a recording mostly of jazz standards.
Sotti and Wilson, Exploring Everything
Fabrizio Sotti had collaborated with Wilson before on her disc Glamoured, but he is equally well-known as a highly eclectic player and producer with a track record in pop and hip-hop as well as jazz. What he brings to Another Country is a sense of genuine collaboration that spans multiple cultures, not just the Italian touch provided by “O Solo Mio”.
“It was great to be able to collaborate with him,” Wilson says of Sotti. “It’s the first time I’ve had that kind of collaboration where we wrote the songs together and talked about what they meant, about the structure. For me it’s important to grow, to expand, and this collaboration provided another opportunity.”
The range of this collaboration is remarkable. “Olomuroro”, for example, appears to wrangle a children’s choir to place a set of Japanese lyrics (later sung in English) over a groove built from Sotti’s acoustic guitar, accordion, and hand drums. Wilson weaves her voice around the rest of the song in ways subtle and slinky. Wilson’s voice is a near-whisper on “Almost Twelve”, which uses the same instrumentation but sets it around a lively Brazilian groove that jumps on the strength of Sotti’s strumming. And “Passion” uses a slinky bass figure in combination with flamenco-styled guitar sound to set up a sexy minor melody. The opener, “Red Guitar”, lets Sotti play some electric guitar with jazz flash even as the rhythm section stay in a cool acoustic mode.
More than any other Wilson project since her M-BASE days, Another Country moves the singer into the shadows at times. “Deep Blue” features Sotti alone on acoustic guitar, working a very effective piece of moody impressionism. “Letting You Go” is for two guitars, with Sotti playing a lead line with a gorgeous muted tone. Both of these pieces are intimate, suggesting that Sotti is finding his voice in this context as much as Wilson is.
Different Styles But One Sound
As diverse as the bags are on Another Country, Wilson and Sotti smartly keep the band small and consistent from tune to tune, making sure that the album’s sound is a through-line amidst the variations. Bassist Nicola Sorato and Accordion player Julien Labro work the tunes with tasteful care, and Mino Cinelu and Lekan Babalola add percussion groove on many tunes. The title track is one of the effective at letting the groove take over in a blend of styles rather than a single pose. Even on “O Solo Mio”, which seems perhaps like a stunt, the sound of the group works to turn things into a kind of folk song.
Wilson consciously works with her bands as a collaborator rather than just a singer out front. “As you experiment and associate with like-minded musicians, that when the process is in full swing—you’re well on your way to developing your own unique approach.”
Ultimately, Wilson sees herself as a musician rather than some kind of singer/diva. “You have to remember, I’ve been a musician since I was five years old. The most important thing to me has been the music. When you get together with great musicians, you don’t separate yourself from them. You join them in the quest to make great music. That is the dynamic you need in order to best manifest this music that we call jazz.”
Still a Jazz Singer?
This far down the road of developing her voice, it’s clear that Wilson doesn’t feel bound by any one style. She has worked through pop songs and blues, folk material and American standards—and plenty of traditions from outside the US. But what kind of musician typically feels the freedom to do all of that while still imprinting everything with a very clear, individual sound? That remains the realm of jazz.
“Jazz” is still somewhat Wilson’s identity, even though her art goes beyond the clichés of the style. Still, there is reverence in Wilson’s voice when she uses the word. “The word is just a word. It’s not my favorite word to use to describe improvisational music that grows from the blues,” she says.
But clearly Cassandra Wilson appreciates the importance of the jazz history and legacy that she comes from. “It’s a discipline, an approach, a way of life, of looking at things—much more than a genre. You have people who may understand the mechanics of it, but do they understand the mission of it?
“If you look at the history of the music, how it grows out of an African-American experience, then the music is about freedom. And that is the emotion you need to have to express the music.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area. He is a contributor to National Public Radio and frequently appears as a guest on WNYC's "Soundcheck" as a jazz critic. He plays both funk and jazz in the bars and clubs in and near the nation's capital. His fiction and humor appear in print and online.
Elmore Magazine
EXCLUSIVE: Cassandra Wilson Stuns In A Gorgeous Clip From Her PBS Special
Music News
October 9, 2015
Cassandra Wilson by Scott Newton
For their newest installment, premiering this Saturday, October 10th on PBS, Austin City Limits is truly outdoing itself as the reigning queen of jazz, Cassandra Wilson, takes on the legendary Billie Holiday.
Austin City Limits opened its 41st Season on October 3rd, and four decades strong, has an astounding line-up for the year ahead, including Don Henley, Gary Clark, Jr. and James Taylor. In an hour long celebration, Grammy award winner Wilson, who was voted “America’s Best Singer” by Time Magazine in 2003, will sing selections from her album Coming Forth by Day, which she released this past April. In Wilson’s first Austin City Limits appearance, she’ll perform with a stunning group of backing musicians, including an 8-piece string section, pianist John Cowherd and Kevin Breit on guitar.
In an exclusive Elmore preview of the show, watch a clip of Wilson performing her astounding rendition of “God Bless The Child” below.
Catch the amazing performance on PBS this Saturday at 8pmCT/9pmET, but if you miss it, don’t fret, because you can stream the episode for a limited time immediately after the broadcast here.
Austin City Limits Web Exclusive: Casssandra Wilson "God Bless the Child"
October 9, 2015
Cassandra Wilson on Tavis Smiley
April 2, 2015
The two-time Grammy winner shares on her new project, “Coming Forth By Day,” which serves as a tribute to the great Billie Holiday.
Watch the video: here.
A world-renowned vocalist, songwriter and producer, Cassandra Wilson was crowned by Time magazine as "the true heir of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan." With a string of four consecutive years as Down Beat magazine's top female jazz vocalist, she still maintained a crossover fan base. A native of Jackson, MS, she was classically trained on piano from age 6. After college and a period in New Orleans, she took her chances on the New York jazz scene. The multiple Grammy winner has gained respect from critics, fans, and fellow artists, including the likes of Prince, with whom she toured in 2011. Her latest project, "Coming Forth By Day," honors the great Billie Holiday, who would have turned 100 years old this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_Wilson
Cassandra Wilson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cassandra Wilson in 2007
Cassandra Wilson (born December 4, 1955) is an American jazz singer, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi.[1] She is one of the most successful female jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins[2] as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work. She has won numerous awards, including two Grammys,[3] and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.[4]
Early life and career
Cassandra Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., a guitarist, bassist, and music teacher;[5] and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher who earned her PhD in education. Her ancestry includes Fon, Yoruba, Irish and Welsh. Between her mother's love for Motown and her father's dedication to jazz, Wilson's parents sparked her early interest in music.[6]
Wilson's earliest formal musical education consisted of classical lessons; she studied piano from the age of six to thirteen and played clarinet in the middle school concert and marching bands.[6] When she was tired of this training, she asked her father to teach her the guitar. Instead, he gave her a lesson in self-reliance, suggesting she study Mel Baymethod books. Wilson explored guitar on her own, developing what she has described as an "intuitive" approach. During this time she began writing her own songs, adopting a folk style. She also appeared in the musical theater productions, including The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy, crossing racial lines in a recently desegregated school system.
Wilson attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University. She graduated with a degree in mass communications. Outside of the classroom, she spent her nights working with R&B, funk, and pop cover bands, also singing in local coffeehouses. The Black Arts Music Society, founded by John Reese and Alvin Fielder, provided her with her first opportunities to perform bebop. In 2007, Wilson received her PhD in Arts from Millsaps College.
In 1981, she moved to New Orleans for a position as assistant public affairs director for the local television station, WDSU. She did not stay long. Working with mentors who included elder statesmen Earl Turbinton, Alvin Batiste, and Ellis Marsalis, Wilson found encouragement to seriously pursue jazz performance and moved to New York City the following year.
Musical association with M-Base
In New York, Wilson's focus turned towards improvisation. Heavily influenced by singers Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, she fine-tuned her vocal phrasing and scat while studying ear training with trombonist Grachan Moncur, III. Frequenting jam sessions under the tutelage of pianist Sadik Hakim, a Charlie Parker alumnus, she met alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, who encouraged her to look beyond the standard jazz repertoire in favor of developing original material. She would become the vocalist and one of the founding members of the M-Base collective in which Coleman was the leading figure, a stylistic outgrowth of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and Black Artists Group (BAG) that re-imagined the grooves of funk and soul within the context of traditional and avant-garde jazz. Peter Watrous in an article for The New York Times states:
The M-Base group in Brooklyn, working with both jazz and pop forms, makes music that at first sounds like funk from the 1970s. Like the music played by Mr. Marsalis (and his brother Wynton) the music made by M-Base - Steve Coleman, with Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson and Geri Allen – is, at its best, filled with subtle ideas working behind the mask of popular music. In Mr. Coleman's group a singer is supported by an electric bass, guitar, drums and electric keyboards, a shiny musical mix that has familiar rock and funk references; yet, because of all its rhythmic and metric manipulations, sounds new.[7]
Although the voice – typically treated as the focal point of any arrangement in which it is included – was not an obvious choice for M-Base's complex textures or harmonically elaborated melodies, Wilson wove herself into the fabric of these settings with wordless improv and lyrics. She can be heard on Coleman's debut as a leader Motherland Pulse(1985), then as member of his Five Elements on On the Edge of Tomorrow (1986), World Expansion (1986), Sine Die (1987), and on M-Base Collective's sole recording as a large ensemble Anatomy of a Groove (1992).
At the same time, Wilson toured with avant-garde trio New Air featuring alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill and recorded Air Show No. 1 (1987) in Italy. A decade her senior and an AACM member, Threadgill has been lauded as a composer for his ability to transcend stylistic boundaries, a trait he and Wilson share.
Solo career
Like fellow M-Base artists, Wilson signed to the Munich-based, independent label JMT. She released her first recording as a leader Point of View in 1986. Like the majority of her JMT albums that followed, originals by Wilson in keeping with M-Base dominated these sessions; she would also record material by and co-written with Coleman, Jean-Paul Bourelly, and James Weidman as well as a few standards. Her throaty contralto gradually emerges over the course of these recordings, making its way to the foreground. She developed a remarkable ability to stretch and bend pitches, elongate syllables, manipulate tone and timbre from dusky to hollow.[8]
While these recordings established her as a serious musician, Wilson received her first broad critical acclaim for the album of standards recorded in the middle of this period, Blue Skies (1988). Her signing with Blue Note Records in 1993 marked a crucial turning point in her career and major breakthrough to audiences beyond jazz with albums selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies.
Beginning with Blue Light 'Til Dawn (1993) her repertoire moved towards a broad synthesis of blues, pop, jazz, world music, and country. Although she continued to perform originals and standards, she adopted songs as diverse as Robert Johnson's "Come On in My Kitchen", Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow", The Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville", and Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry".
Wilson's 1996 album New Moon Daughter won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance.[3] In 1997, she recorded and toured as a featured vocalist with Wynton Marsalis' Pulitzer Prize winning composition, Blood on the Fields.
Miles Davis was one of Wilson's greatest influences. In 1989, Wilson performed as the opening act for Davis at the JVC Jazz Festival in Chicago. In 1999 she produced Traveling Miles as a tribute to Davis. The album developed from a series of jazz concerts that she performed at Lincoln Center in November 1997 in Davis' honor, and includes three selections based on Davis' own compositions, from which Wilson adapted the original themes.
Personal life
Wilson was married to Anthony Wilson from 1981 to 1983.[9]
She has a son, Jeris, born in the late 1980s. Her song "Out Loud (Jeris' Blues)" on the album She Who Weeps is dedicated to him. For many years she and her son lived in New York City's Sugar Hill, in an apartment that once belonged to Count Basie, Lena Horneand the boxer Joe Louis.[10]
From 2000 to 2003 Wilson was married to actor Isaach de Bankolé, who directed her in the concert film Traveling Miles: Cassandra Wilson (2000).[11]
Wilson and her mother are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.[12][13]
Awards and honors
1994–1996: Female Jazz Vocalist of the Year, Down Beat
1997: Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, New Moon Daughter[3]
1999: Miles Davis Prize, Montreal International Jazz Festival
2001: "America's Best Singer", Time[3]
2003: Honorary doctorate in the Arts, Millsaps College
2009: Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, Loverly
2010: Added to Mississippi Blues Trail[14]
2010: Best Vocal Album, NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll 2010, Silver Pony
2011: Best Traditional Jazz Album, BET Soul Train Award, Silver Pony
2015: Honorary doctorate in Fine Arts, The New School
2015: Spirit of Ireland Award, Irish Arts Centre
2020: Honorary doctorate in Music, Berklee College of Music
Discography
As leader
Point of View (JMT, 1986)
Days Aweigh (JMT, 1987)
Blue Skies (JMT, 1988)
Jumpworld (JMT, 1990)
Live (JMT, 1991)
She Who Weeps (JMT, 1991)
Dance to the Drums Again (DIW, 1992)
After the Beginning Again (JMT, 1992)
Blue Light 'til Dawn (Blue Note, 1993)
New Moon Daughter (Blue Note, 1995)
Rendezvous with Jacky Terrasson (Blue Note, 1997)
Traveling Miles (Blue Note, 1999)
Belly of the Sun (Blue Note, 2002)
Glamoured (Blue Note, 2003)
Thunderbird (Blue Note, 2006)
Loverly (Blue Note, 2008)
Silver Pony (Blue Note, 2010)
Another Country (eOne, 2012)[15])
Coming Forth by Day (Legacy, 2015)[16]
Compilations
Songbook (JMT, 1995)
Sings Standards (Verve, 2002)
Love Phases Dimensions: From the JMT Years (Edel, 2004)
Closer to You: The Pop Side (Blue Note, 2009)
5 Original Albums (Blue Note, 2018)
As guest
With Steve Coleman
Motherland Pulse (JMT, 1985)
On the Edge of Tomorrow (JMT, 1986)
World Expansion (JMT, 1987)
Sine Die (Pangaea, 1988)
Rhythm People (The Resurrection of Creative Black Civilization) (RCA, 1990)
Black Science (Novus, 1991)
Drop Kick (Novus, 1992)
The Ascension to Light (BMG France, 1999)
With Wynton Marsalis
Blood on the Fields (Columbia, 1997)
Reeltime (Sony, 1999)
With The Roots
Do You Want More?!!!??! (DGC, 1994)
Illadelph Halflife (DGC, 1996)
With others
New Air, Air Show No. 1 (Black Saint, 1986)
Don Byron, A Fine Line: Arias & Lieder (Blue Note, 2000)
Terence Blanchard, Let's Get Lost (Sony, 2001)
Terri Lyne Carrington, The Mosaic Project (Concord Jazz, 2011)
Regina Carter, Rhythms of the Heart (Verve, 1999)
Olu Dara, Neighborhoods (Atlantic, 2001)
Kurt Elling, The Messenger (Blue Note, 1997)
Robin Eubanks, Karma (JMT, 1991)
Bill Frisell & Elvis Costello, The Sweetest Punch (Decca, 1999)
Charlie Haden Quartet West, Sophisticated Ladies (EmArcy, 2010)
Dave Holland, Dream of the Elders (ECM, 1995)
Javon Jackson, A Look Within (Blue Note, 1996)
Angelique Kidjo, Oremi (Island, 1998)
M-Base Collective, Anatomy of a Groove (Columbia, 1992)
David Murray Black Saint Quartet, Sacred Ground (Justin Time, 2007)
Meshell Ndegeocello, The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel (Shanachie, 2005)
Greg Osby, Season of Renewal (JMT, 1990)
Courtney Pine, Modern Day Jazz Stories (Antilles, 1995)
David Sanchez, Street Scenes (Columbia, 1996)
Steve Turre, Steve Turre (Verve, 1997)
Luther Vandross, I Know (EMI, 1998)
Count Basie Orchestra, Ella 100: Live at the Apollo! (Concord, 2020)
External links
Official website
Cassandra Wilson discography at Discogs
Cassandra Wilson at IMDb
Cassandra Wilson at Blue Note Records
Cassandra Wilson at Montreal International Jazz Festival
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cassandra Wilson.
More Videos
Austin City Limits Interview
October 8, 2015
Austin City Limits Interview with Cassandra Wilson:
AustinCityLimitsTV
October 8, 2015
Cassandra Wilson discusses the legacy of Billie Holiday and why she chose to pay tribute to her with her last release. Watch Austin City Limits on PBS
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFGiZCVePKI
Cassandra Wilson - St. James Infirmary
September 29, 2008:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is3509xVm-c&t=236s
Cassandra Wilson & her band performing at the 32º Festival de Jazz de Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 17 July 2008.
Musicians:
CASSANDRA WILSON - vocals
MARVIN SEWELL - guitar
JONATHAN BAPTISTE - piano, keyboards
REGINALD VEAL - double bass
LEKAN BABALOLA - percussion
HERLIN RILEY - drums
"St. James Infirmary Blues" is an American folksong of anonymous origin, though sometimes credited to the songwriter Irving Mills. Louis Armstrong made it famous in his influential 1928 recording. "St. James Infirmary Blues" is based on an 18th century traditional English folk song called "The Unfortunate Rake". There are numerous versions of the song throughout the English-speaking world. The title is derived from St. James Hospital in London, a religious foundation for the treatment of leprosy. It was closed in 1532 when Henry VIII acquired the land to build St. James Palace. The song was first collected in England in its version as "The Unfortunate Rake" by Henry Hammond by a Mr. William Cutis at Lyme Regis, Dorset in March 1906. Notable performers of this song include Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Big Mama Thornton, Cassandra Wilson, Janis Joplin, The Doors and many-many others. Also guitarists like Marc Ribot and Ivan "Boogaloo Joe" Jones have recorded instrumental versions.
ST. JAMES INFIRMARY
(Traditional Lyrics):
I went down to St. James Infirmary, Saw my baby lying there, He was stretched down on a long white table, So sweet, so cold, so fair. Let him go, let him go, God bless him, Wherever he may be, He can search this whole wide world over, But he's never gonna find another girl like me...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLp-tCH0zwM
Jazzscene
Ocean Blue Jazz Festival in HITACHINAKA, Japan
Cassandra Wilson - Don't Explain
April 13, 2015:
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLp-tCH0zwM
The song "Don't Explain" from the album Coming Forth By Day by Cassandra Wilson.
About the album: An otherworldly musical homage to legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915) on the 100th anniversary of the singer's birth, Coming Forth By Day is Cassandra Wilson's moody, soulful new album showcase for contemporary yet timeless interpretations of standards associated with Lady Day.
Cassandra Wilson - Strange Fruit (audio)
February 25, 2015:
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyNtFAMMsuA
