Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy-winning vocalist known for her deep roots in classic jazz and wide-ranging renditions from blues, folk and country, has died. She was 70.<\/p>\n
John Horhn, the mayor of Wilson\u2019s native Jackson, Miss., released a statement saying \u201cJackson has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice. Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her wherever her music reached.\u201d The statement did not give a cause of death.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s catalog showcased the full breadth of her native Mississippi\u2019s musical heritage, drawing primarily from jazz but spanning every foundational American genre. After attending Jackson State University and Millsaps College, Wilson got a job at a New Orleans television station, which put her in the orbit of local jazz legends Ellis Marsalis and Alvin Batiste, among others. Wilson moved to New York City and joined saxophonist Steve Coleman\u2019s influential M-Base Collective, debuting with her 1986 LP \u201cPoint of View.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blue Note Records released her breakthrough solo LP, 1993\u2019s \u201cBlue Light \u2018Til Dawn,\u201d a mix of originals and covers of work by blues pioneer Robert Johnson and folk singers Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell. The album made her a star beyond sophisticated jazz spheres, with Time magazine once referring to Wilson as \u201cAmerica\u2019s best singer.\u201d 1995\u2019s \u201cNew Moon Daughter\u201d won the Grammy for jazz vocal performance (which she would win again in 2009 for \u201cLoverly,\u201d along with two other Grammy nominations). <\/p>\n
In 1997, she contributed to Wynton Marsalis\u2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning \u201cBlood on the Fields\u201d album, a harrowing and intimate narrative of slavery and the search for freedom in the U.S. Yet her wide genre interests brought her back to her roots in 2002\u2019s \u201cBelly of the Sun,\u201d with songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jimmy Webb and Robbie Robertson, and into hip-hop on 2006\u2019s sample-heavy \u201cThunderbird.\u201d Wilson collaborated with John Legend and Ravi Coltrane, and released her last album, the Billie Holiday-rooted \u201cComing Forth by Day,\u201d in 2015. Wilson earned a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail<\/a>, and in 2022, Wilson was named an NEA Jazz Master <\/a>from the National Endowment for the Arts.<\/p>\n \u201cCassandra Wilson showed the world the richness of Jackson and Mississippi music,\u201d Horhn said in his statement. \u201cHer legacy will continue to be heard in the artists she inspired and the pride she brought to her hometown.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy-winning vocalist known for her deep roots in classic jazz and wide-ranging renditions from blues,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[12707,282775,28976,282774,282769,434,282771,41597,282772,18,117,19,17,282773,19177,337,282770,76766,79591,65],"class_list":["post-669788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-album","tag-antonio-carlos-jobim","tag-blue","tag-blue-pioneer-robert-johnson","tag-cassandra-wilson","tag-celebrities","tag-classic-jazz","tag-cover","tag-deep-root","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-horhn","tag-mississippi","tag-music","tag-native-jackson","tag-original","tag-statement","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117204863417362856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}