Cassandra Wilson

Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson, a native of Jackson, became known for broad explorations of many forms of music, including the blues, and recorded songs associated with Delta blues artists Robert Johnson, Son House, and Muddy Waters. She grew up on Albermarle Road and was born Cassandra Marie Fowlkes on December 4, 1955. Wilson first learned clarinet and in her late teens made her professional debut playing folk songs on the guitar. While attending Jackson State University she played guitar and sang with Past, Present, Future, alongside fellow students Rhonda Richmond, Yvonne “Niecie” Evers, and Nellie “Mack” McInnis, and she also performed in local groups including Let’s Eat and These Days and worked with Jackson musicians such as Jesse Robinson, Willie Silas, Bernard Jenkins, and Claude Wells. After encouragement from drummer Alvin Fielder, she began singing modern jazz. In 1981 she moved to New Orleans, where she performed with Earl Turbington and Ellis Marsalis, and in 1982 she relocated to New York City and began a long relationship with the experimental jazz collective M-Base, led by Steve Coleman. She recorded her first album in 1986 for the German JMT label, signed with Blue Note in 1993, and gained international acclaim as well as Grammy Awards for New Moon Daughter in 1996 and Loverly in 2003. In 2001 Time magazine called her “America’s best singer” in recognition of her accomplishments in jazz and her creative approaches to a broad range of music, including the blues. Her father, bassist Herman Fowlkes, Jr., was a leading figure in Jackson’s jazz scene and an integral part of an under-documented Jackson jazz and R&B community that produced national figures including Teddy Edwards, Freddie Waits, Dick Griffin, and Mel Brown, as well as local luminaries including Kermit, Jr., Bernard, and Sherrill Holly. A native of the Chicago area, Fowlkes played trumpet in a U. S. Army band and came to Jackson in 1948, where he studied at Jackson State with music professor William W. “Prof” Davis. Beginning in 1952, he was one of the first Mississippi musicians to play electric bass. He performed locally in bands led by Carlia “Duke” Oatis, Clarence “Duke” Huddleston, Joe Dyson, Bernard “Bunny” Williams, and O’Neal Hudson, worked in jazz and blues combos with Andy Hardwick, Willie Silas, Charles Fairley, and Al Clark, toured briefly as bassist for Ivory Joe Hunter, occasionally accompanied performers including Sam Cooke and Gatemouth Brown on local shows, and recorded for Trumpet Records with Sonny Boy Williamson and Jerry McCain in 1953, later recalling sessions with Lloyd Price and others.

Jackson, Mississippi · United States