Nancy Wilson Biography
Nancy Wilson is one of her generation’s most stylish singers, as well as a versatile entertainer and song stylist who achieved substantial success in the worlds of pop and R&B. But it was jazz that was the three-time Grammy-winner’s original vehicle, and she’s returned to jazz on a regular basis throughout her lengthy career.
In her early life, the Ohio-born Wilson was exposed by her father to the recordings of such male vocalists as Billy Eckstine, Nat “King” Cole and Jimmy Scott, and later heard such female singers as Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker and Esther Phillips in a nearby juke joint. She first won attention performing in the jazz clubs of Columbus, before moving to New York in 1956, where she quickly gained attention as a live performer.
Wilson began recording in 1960, collaborating with the likes of Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing and Billy May’s Orchestra. Within a few years, she moved away from jazz to record in a more commercial pop and R&B vein, with considerable commercial success. Wilson became a familiar face in the mainstream entertainment world, and in 1967 hosted her own weekly TV variety show on NBC—a considerable achievement for an African-American performer at the time.
But Wilson never lost touch with the jazz world, and she reembraced her original style in the ’80s, recording The Two of Us, an album of duets with Ramsey Lewis, and working with such jazz players as Stanley Clarke, Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis and Benny Golson. In the ’90s, Wilson hosted the long-running Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio and achieved success in the urban/adult contemporary market with a series of romantic ballads.
In the early 2000s, Wilson did more work with Ramsey Lewis, and recorded a series of jazz-based albums that showed her musical gifts to be as sharp as ever. She won Grammy awards in 2005 and 2007, and in August 2007 celebrated her 70th birthday with an all-star event at the Hollywood Bowl.
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