Trivia

Resides in a Sugar Hill (Manhattan) apartment that had periodically belonged to Count Basie, Lena Horne and boxing legend Joe Louis.

Owns a bronze figurine of a Yoruban musician believed to be over one hundred years old.

Began singing professionally in 1975, performing mainly blues and folk songs. She eventually emerged as a jazz singer after studying with drummer Alvin Fielder.

Has interpreted songs by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Monkees and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Her album Blue Skies (1988) was voted jazz album of the year by Billboard magazine.

Studied piano and guitar from the age of nine.

She won numerous awards, including two Grammys, and was named "America's Best Singer" by Time magazine in 2001.

Cassandra Wilson was an American jazz singer, songwriter and producer from Jackson, Mississippi.

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.

Wilson's 1996 album "New Moon Daughter" won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. In 1997, she recorded and toured as a featured vocalist with Wynton Marsalis's Pulitzer Prize-winning composition "Blood on the Fields".

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.

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 in 1982.

In 1981, she moved to New Orleans to take up a position as assistant public affairs director for the local television station, WDSU. She did not stay long.

Wilson toured with avant-garde trio New Air, featuring alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill, and recorded Air Show No. 1 (1987) in Italy.

Her earliest formal musical education consisted of classical lessons; she studied piano from the age of six to thirteen and played clarinet in her middle school concert and marching bands. 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 Bay method books.

She also appeared in musical theater productions, including The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy, crossing racial lines in a recently desegregated school system.

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.

Wilson attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University. She graduated with a degree in mass communications from Jackson State.

Wilson explored guitar on her own, developing what she described as an "intuitive" approach. During this time, she began writing her own songs, adopting a folk style.

She was one of the most successful female jazz singers and has been described by critic Gary Giddins 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.

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 an honorary doctorate in Arts from Millsaps College.

Her song "Out Loud (Jeris' Blues)" on the 1991 album 'She Who Weeps' is dedicated to her son Jeris. For many years, Wilson and her son lived in New York City's Sugar Hill, in an apartment that had once belonged to Count Basie, Lena Horne, and the boxer Joe Louis.

In 1997, she recorded and toured as a featured vocalist with Wynton Marsalis's Pulitzer Prize-winning composition "Blood on the Fields".

Wilson and her mother were members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.