Wesley Willis(1963-2003)

Wesley Willis was a truly distinctive one-of-a-kind singer/songwriter who suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Willis was born on May 31, 1963 in Chicago, Illinois. One in a family of ten children, Wesley's parents separated when he was young and he subsequently grew up in a series of foster homes being primarily raised by two older brothers who went with Wesley from home to home. He was first diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989. Wesley started writing songs in 1992 and was discovered singing on the streets of Chicago in the early 1990's. Willis was well known for his short, simple, humorous, highly peculiar, and usually profanity-ridden three-chord rants on such topics as music, superheroes, people he knew, and trivial everyday subjects. Wesley became a substantial cult figure in certain alternative rock music circles thanks to both assorted independently recorded albums and various albums done on notable indie rock labels that include Alternative Tentacles, Fuse Records, Typhoid Mary, and Oglio Records. In 1996 Willis was profiled on MTV and signed a major record label contract with American Records. Moreover, Wesley not only fronted his own hard rock group The Wesley Willis Fiasco, but also was a visual artist who produced hundreds of unusual and intricate colored ink pen drawings primarily of Chicago streetscapes and CTA buses. Willis died at age 40 from leukemia on August 21, 2003.