Cassandra Wilson, singer, songwriter, producer and two-time Grammy winner, has died at the age of 70. “Cassandra passed away peacefully at her home, surrounded by family, close friends and her manager,” her representative told WBGO, the jazz radio station.
In 2001, Wilson was nicknamed “the best singer in the United States” by TIME magazine and is regarded as a pivotal figure capable of widening and blurring the boundaries of traditional jazz, freely exploring genres such as pop, R&B, folk or country.
In the same TIME article, journalist Stanley Crouch asserted that there was no purer and more authentic feminine force in American music at the time. In fact, Crouch placed Wilson ahead of all jazz singers in history, “except for the towering Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter.”
The artist trained in the early 80s in New Orleans, before moving to New York to become the new lead vocalist of the M-Base collective. Her voice was pivotal in earning Wilson four Grammy nominations, of which she won two: Best Jazz Vocal Album for ‘New Moon Daughter’ (1997) and ‘Loverly’ (2009).
Her last album, ‘Coming Forth by Day’, was a tribute to Billie Holiday, to whom she also dedicated a concert at the Apollo Theater in New York.
