Many critics considered Cassandra Wilson, who died last week at age 70, the finest jazz singer of her generation, but the truth was she could work in any musical context and make it her own.
Wilson studied classical music as a child, got into folk as a teen and sang funk, pop and R&B in college before moving to New York and taking up jazz. Her first recordings were with alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, whose avant-garde style incorporated some of those disparate influences. Her first vocal came on “No Good Time Fairies” from his 1985 LP “Motherland Pulse” LP, 1985.
She worked in the same style on her solo recordings, which included many or her own compositions, but branched out in 1988 with an album of standards, “Blue Skies.”
After that she released a series of LPs that gained her a popular audience through her sometimes radical reimagining of pop hits that she made sound like standards. Her heartrending reading of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” from the 1999 album “Traveling Miles” is a fine example.
Wilson’s last album was 2015’s “Coming Forth by Day,” her homage to Billie Holiday. It features 11 songs Holiday was noted for, along with one Wilson original, “Last Song (For Lester),” her imagined last message from Holiday to her friend and musical soulmate, Lester Young.
